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Stories from Slate“The Terrorism Is Starting”http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/08/egypt_falls_apart_fresh_violence_and_fighting_have_made_egyptians_more_polarized.html
<p>On Sunday morning—the first day of the workweek in Egypt—Cairo seemed to be returning to some semblance of normalcy. Cars jammed the roads that connect the outer neighborhoods to the center of the capital, but evidence of the past week’s bloodbath, which has killed more than 1,000 people since the military government cracked down on Muslim Brotherhood supporters of ousted President Mohammed Morsi, was everywhere—burned out Central Security Forces vans and armored cash transport cars dotted the road from the airport. Smoke still rose from the Arab Contractor’s building close to Ramses Square, where a standoff between Morsi supporters and angry civilians and security services had come to a head two evenings before.</p>
<p>I had asked Michael, who I have worked with for years, to pick me up from the airport because of increasing attacks on Western journalists in Cairo. He took the scene in stride as we stalled and stopped in traffic, pointing out the remains of torched cars and anti-Brotherhood graffiti along our route. “Not all of us are shooting each other,” he told me when I asked if he was nervous about the situation. He was completely unfazed by the week’s carnage and said the Muslim Brotherhood had asked for it by continuing the sit-ins it had been holding since Morsi was removed in a coup on July 3. “They are terrorists,” he said, plain and simple.</p>
<p>Michael is a Coptic Christian. Copts make up roughly 10 percent of Egypt’s population of 85 million. While sporadic attacks on churches and Copts have become more frequent with the rise of political Islam, Michael has always claimed he wasn’t afraid of sectarian attacks. Nor did he seem to care if all the Brotherhood supporters were expunged from Egypt. “They are terrorists,” he repeated, even though just a month earlier they were politicians, representing Egypt after winning free and fair elections.</p>
<p>I wasn’t surprised to hear him defend the military’s bloodletting. In the past five years, the words “civil war” have never been closer to the tip of people’s tongues. There’s something deeply wrong here, and it isn’t just the scenes of urban battles and morgues—an unfortunately frequent sight in the Middle East. Today in Egypt, the sheer hatred and vilification of the other side has created two parallel worlds of victims.</p>
<p>Well-known liberal activists defend the slaughter of Brotherhood supporters, while groups of Islamists burn churches across the country in retribution for a coup engineered by the higher echelons of the military. Attacks on the foreign press, who are thought to be in cahoots with the Brotherhood, are rising. Groups of armed citizens have formed neighborhood patrols to defend their streets, picking fights with anyone they don’t take a liking to. &nbsp;The divide, fanned by state and private media, seems impossible to breech, while compassion from either side has long since faded—both sides claiming if you’re not with us, you’re against us.</p>
<p>“This is a time of insanity,” says Nadine Wahab, a human rights activist. “I’ve almost stopped engaging the political discourse, because every time I do, I get slammed down by someone. … If I mention the violence by the protesters, the Muslim Brotherhood, I’m told I’m supporting an authoritarian regime. If I mention violence by the state, I’m told I’m supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and their violence. So from this perspective it’s a lose-lose for me, but I do see it as a win-win because at some point one of them has to stop, there has to be this point where it’s too much and I’m hoping this happens before we turn into Syria.”</p>
<p>There was a segment of the population that always despised the Muslim Brotherhood. But the numbers demonizing the Brotherhood have quickly mushroomed, especially since the military ousted Morsi a month ago. In Wahab’s opinion, the battle lines were drawn last December when the Brotherhood encouraged its supporters to take the streets to defend the president and attacked a sit-in in front of the presidential palace. The crowds had been peacefully protesting Morsi’s seizure of unchecked power until a new constitution, hastily written by Islamists, was ratified.</p>
<p>Wahab says the general public realized the Brotherhood would send armed civilians to protect its political interests. At the time, she says, people thought: “They’re coming to kill us.” Six people were killed that night.</p>
<p>In the months since, sporadic armed clashes have continued, buttressed by further obstinacy from both sides in coming to a compromise over the country’s political turmoil. Many began to believe the Brotherhood would do whatever it took to maintain its grip on power—this has created an atmosphere of blind hatred.</p>
<p>“Perception is more important than facts right now,” she maintains. “It’s a very basic fear. People are not just afraid of going into the streets, they are literally afraid of being shot in their houses.” It’s a fear felt by just about everyone.</p>
<p>Wahab is one of the few people I know who seems to have compassion for both sides. But on the streets, the divide seems to be growing, fed by state media and private channels, which have targeted the foreign media, blaming them for sympathizing with the Brotherhood, ignoring Morsi’s abuses while in power, and failing to cover the Brotherhood camps alleged violence at the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque and Nadha sit-ins. (The Brotherhood is accused of torturing and killing those the group detained over the course of their one-month sit-in.)</p>
<p>On Saturday, the Egyptian government issued a seven-point memo to foreign journalists chiding them for biased coverage “according to a certain political agenda … conveying a distorted image that is very much far from the facts and media coverage. This raises many questions about the neutrality of this media coverage and its goals.” The interim president and Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the general in charge of the armed forces, echoed those claims on television. Violence against foreign reporters has only increased. Age-old conspiracy theories that the U.S. government is trying to destabilize Egypt, this time by supporting the Brotherhood, have taken on a renewed urgency.</p>
<p>Mahmoud Salem, a well-known Egyptian blogger who writes under the name Sandmonkey, denounced the uptick in xenophobia on Sunday: “You see, in order for the international media to showcase your side of the story, you actually have to have a side of the story. Your new state needs to have a solid case why it overthrew the old one, which, FYI, is not being made,” he wrote, urging the local media to do more to explain the Brotherhood’s abuses while in power and for Egyptians to stop threatening the foreign press on the streets. But it seems few people got his message—another report of journalists being detained by plain clothed officers surfaced yesterday.</p>
<p>Although the rallies are now smaller, the situation is by no means under control. The government acknowledged that security forces killed 36 Islamists in their custody Sunday night. Meanwhile, militants were reported to have killed at least 24 police officers in northern Sinai on Monday. The response from both sides seems mired in the pattern of blaming the other.</p>
<p>Back in the car, Michael and I had found common ground; we both agreed the January 2011 revolution had ended—the feeling of national euphoria and hope for a better, united Egypt was history. We also agreed the Islamists would never forget last week’s violence. “The revolution may be over, but the terrorism is starting,” he said.&nbsp;</p>Mon, 19 Aug 2013 19:36:30 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/08/egypt_falls_apart_fresh_violence_and_fighting_have_made_egyptians_more_polarized.htmlSarah A. Topol2013-08-19T19:36:30ZEgypt is tearing itself apart, as both sides view themselves as victims in the fight of their life.News and PoliticsWhy Egypt Is Tearing Itself Apart100130819010internationalegyptSarah A. TopolForeignershttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/foreigners/2013/08/egypt_falls_apart_fresh_violence_and_fighting_have_made_egyptians_more_polarized.htmlfalsefalsefalsePhoto by Amr Dalsh/ReutersSupporters of the Muslim Brotherhood and ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi shout slogans against the military and interior ministry during a protest in front of Al Istkama mosque at Giza Square, south of Cairo, on Sunday.In Qaddafi Countryhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/11/dispatch_from_sirte_qaddafi_s_hometown.html
<p>SIRTE, Libya— “God and Muammar and Libya, only!” It is the now-taboo motto of the Brother Leader’s Libya, and I heard it more than once here, walking the ruined streets of Muammar Qaddafi’s hometown. Among the shattered houses of the neighborhood where Qaddafi is believed to have spent his final days, I encountered a man who knew exactly who to blame for the destruction. “NATO did this,” he said.</p>
<p>Bullet holes pockmark buildings, windows are shattered, and there are chunks of buildings missing, blasted away by incoming mortar and rocket fire. But nothing looks like it’s been targeted by airstrikes. As far as I can see in District 2, there are no signs that anything was dropped from above: Roofs are intact, no houses are completely leveled. But the man was adamant. “NATO,” he said. Whether it’s merely a coping mechanism that allows him not to blame fellow citizens, or he truly thinks it was Western intervention, it’s hard to tell. Either way, he smiled and recited the six-word slogan of Qaddafi’s Libya. His tone was not unfriendly, if slightly aggressive.</p>
<p>Among the war’s losers, the resentment of defeat is everywhere, as is the pervasive fear that the worst has yet to come. The city’s resentment remains a festering wound in Libya’s already messy future. If there’s going to be a counterrevolution, here live the insurgency’s shock troops.</p>
<p>“We have no water, no electricity, food or medical care,” Hassan Abdel Razzaq told me, standing outside a burnt-out house he says was torched by former rebel fighters because the owner was suspected of working with Qaddafi. “We can’t sleep at night. Rebels shoot all night—they destroy furniture, they destroy houses. I can’t tell the difference between a revolutionary and a thief. We’ve returned to the 19<sup>th</sup> century.”</p>
<p>Qaddafi always favored Sirte. He turned a small rural settlement on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea into a second de-facto capital, with villas for his cronies and a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newsvideo/8816547/NTC-forces-seize-Sirte-university-and-conference-centre.html">conference center where he hosted visiting foreign dignitaries</a>. Throughout the war, the residents appeared to cheer Qaddafi and rebuffed attempts to negotiate their surrender.</p>
<p>Over and over again, people took me into their houses to list their complaints. Many of their homes are trashed, possibly looted, and uninhabitable. Said Ibrahim Ali, a 20-year-old medical student sweeping the debris in his family home into a neat pile on the street: “I don’t know what’s going to happen. But I haven’t seen any improvement since the revolutionaries came.”</p>
<p>Some of the city’s residents are taking it upon themselves to fix the wreckage, but they face almost insurmountable obstacles. Mohammed Ehgniwa, a petroleum engineer, is absorbed with restarting Sirte’s water purification plant. But so far it’s not going well. “The city needs cleaning now,” Ehgniwa said. “We need more vehicles and equipment to help us.” Yet no one is sure how to purify the water supply, fearing that there might be corpses rotting in the wells. In any case, the point is moot: There is no electricity to run the purification system.</p>
<p>It never made sense to me why people would support a mercurial dictator like Qaddafi, especially once it was clear he was losing. The rebels used to say Qaddafi was buying his supporters, but the poverty in and around Sirte suggests otherwise. Even with the Brother Leader gone, Qaddafi’s cult of personality appears to be alive and well in his hometown.</p>
<p>“We need security, we need to work safely, no one should disturb or terrorize us,” Ehgniwa told me. “We need a Libyan army to control the people and protect the country as Qaddafi did before. That way nobody can ignore us or bomb inside our country.” Many here seem to see Qaddafi as a man who stood up to the West and made the international community respect Libya.</p>
<p>Qaddafi was born in Qasr Abu Hadi, a rural farming area located just outside Sirte. It is the poorest place I’ve seen in Libya, just a collection of cement houses in the desert scrub. Members of his tribe dug graves for Qaddafi and his son—shallow trenches in the sand surrounded by cinder blocks next to one of Qaddafi’s many tents, since ransacked. They offered to bury the two men here, but the National Transitional Council denied their request. Qaddafi was buried in a secret grave.</p>
<p>When I visited Qasr Abu Hadi, members of Qaddafi’s clan were trying to repair severed underground electricity cables. “We just want things to be the way they were before,” said Ezzedine Abdul Salem, a 31-year-old bus driver covered in sand and dirt from hours of digging. “Before security was better, we had services, schools, university, and electricity.” The winter is approaching and Salem is worried about shelter and water. “Look at us,” he said. “Are we rich? People around the president from different tribes were getting rich. But us, we’re not rich.”</p>
<p>Ehgniwa took me and some other journalists to see the war’s refugees, families from Sirte who fled the fighting and are now homeless and living on the outskirts of the city. The few families squatting in half-completed houses wouldn’t let us inside because we were not family members. “Look at the conditions,” Ehgniwa said, pointing at the cement fa&ccedil;ade and the lack of windows.</p>
<p>These people have nowhere to go, Ehgniwa said. Their previous houses have been destroyed, and they don’t have money to rebuild. Yet, even here, after losing a war that has left them homeless, the houses are covered with loyalist graffiti. As we approached, I saw a man quickly drop a black rock and walk away from the building. When I walked over to the wall, I saw a familiar phrase written in charcoal: “God and Muammar and Libya, only.”</p>Wed, 09 Nov 2011 21:26:49 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/11/dispatch_from_sirte_qaddafi_s_hometown.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-11-09T21:26:49ZMost of Libya is glad to be rid of him, but the slain dictator remains popular in his hometown.News and PoliticsThere’s At Least One Place in Libya Where Muammar Qaddafi Remains Popular100111109010LibyaLibyaLibyaSarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/11/dispatch_from_sirte_qaddafi_s_hometown.htmlfalsefalsefalseAFP/Getty Images.A Libyan man inspects the destruction inside his house in Sirte's District 2 neighborhood, where Qaddafi is believed to have spent his final daysGuns on Paradehttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/11/libya_after_qaddafi_dangerous_weapons_are_everywhere_.html
<p>MISRATA, Libya—Muammar Qaddafi is dead and Libya is free, but it seems unlikely that this country can return to normal anytime soon. Heavily armed militias continue to operate semi-autonomously, and guns are everywhere. The war has made thousands of young men—engineering students, day laborers, mechanics—into conquerors. They will have a difficult time returning to their previous lives. Collecting arms and keeping the swaggering young fighters under control presents a daunting challenge to a fledgling government.</p>
<p>At a victory parade of sorts on Friday in this city’s Freedom Square, former rebels put the spoils of Qaddafi’s vast weapons warehouses on display: powerful anti-aircraft guns, helicopter rocket pods, and cannons that they had bolted to the back of pickup trucks and armor-plated SUVs. The marchers wore their old military fatigues, now neatly laundered and ironed, and slung their AKs across their shoulders. They left the ammunition at home, they explained.</p>
<p>“We’ll give the guns back,” Hassan Abu Fanes assured me. “We’ll give them to the new army that will protect our country.” As we chatted, Mohamed Turki, a 17-year-old high school student, approached. “Now, there’s no law and security here,” he said. “When it settles down, we’ll give in our weapons. But without law, we won’t give our arms to the local council.”</p>
<p>Libya’s “government” appears to consist of a loose confederation of local councils that report to a city council, which then consults with the <a href="http://www.ntclibya.org/english/">National Transitional Council</a> that represents Libya abroad. But it’s unclear whether anyone actually listens to any of them.</p>
<p>Each brigade says it has registered its fighters’ weapons in their own books (each brigade has a binder of weapons and fighters). But the guns people bought on the black market or looted from Qaddafi stockpiles are unaccounted for. In one home in Misrata, a family showed me machine guns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and rockets they keep wrapped in sheets, hidden under beds and sofas.</p>
<p>So everyone still has weapons, even if there is no obvious enemy to point them at. Instead, regional rivalries are flaring up. During the military parade in Misrata, one guy in my convoy chastised a nearby vehicle for belting out songs from eastern Libya. “We’re from Misrata, why are you singing about Benghazi?” he shouted. The singers immediately changed their tune.</p>
<p>The third-largest city in Libya, Misrata used to be a business hub with a busy port. But by enduring a brutal months-long siege and pushing Qaddafi forces out of the city, Misratrans gained a reputation as fighters. Their brigades were integral to the liberation of Tripoli and the final battles in Qaddafi’s hometown of Sirte. Many in the city now think that should give them more say in Libya’s new government. To show their dominance, fighters from Misrata carted off the infamous monument of <a href="http://www.esquire.com/the-side/opinion/7totalitarianwonders-2">a fist crushing a U.S. fighter jet</a> from Qaddafi’s Tripoli compound, which he used as a backdrop for speeches during the revolution. They brought it all the way to Tripoli Street in Misrata, and as the parade inched by, the fighters honked triumphantly.</p>
<p>Three fighters from different brigades told me the Misrata Military Council tried to stop this parade from happening at all, worried other cities would see it as a show of intimidation. The former rebels held the parade anyway. It’s worrying if true—that the city’s control over its own militias is so tenuous it couldn’t even stop a simple parade.</p>
<p>The Deefa Misrata Brigade didn’t join Friday’s victory party. Most of its fighters are more than 100 miles away, patrolling the streets of Tripoli, part of an invading force that never left. Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the commander of the Tripoli Military Council, has repeatedly asked external militias to leave, but the guys in Deefa Misrata say they have no intention of going until they think the Tripoli soldiers can handle themselves. They have no idea when that might be.</p>
<p>I visited the Deefa Misrata Brigade’s base outside Tripoli, and as we drove from downtown to the compound, we listened to an English-language radio station. The host was taking calls to discuss civilians turning weapons over to the government, whether for money or for free. After a few callers, I heard what seems to be a popular sentiment. “They’re not convinced, because they don’t have trust,” said the man on the radio. “A dictator may come again, so we should stay armed. … I am one who doesn’t trust the national army.”</p>
<p>Sitting next to me was Ibrahim Almazig, a young bearded fighter in fatigues and dark glasses, with a Belgian assault rifle balanced on his knee. The gun looks like it belongs in <em>Star Wars</em>, not bouncing around the backseat in Tripoli’s traffic. Almazig told me he looted it from the government armory during the battle for Qaddafi’s compound. When I asked whether he’d be willing to turn it over to the government, his answer was provisional. “If the council in Misrata asked, we’d give it to them tomorrow,” he said. “But not the Tripoli government.” At the base, the conference table in the commander’s office was stacked with AK-47s. There were more guns than former rebels there.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Tripoli’s armed militias maintain that they are quite capable, thank you, of keeping the peace and gathering up weapons. Najid El Jedek is the head of the military council for Abu Salim, a sprawling lower-class neighborhood of Tripoli where residents mostly sided with Qaddafi. A former general in Qaddafi’s military, he was kicked out of the service in 1995 when his uncle was arrested for launching a failed coup. El Jedek told me his council has collected more than 5,000 weapons from residents and has registered 600 men for gun permits, which need to be renewed every month.</p>
<p>People are turning in weapons every day, he said. “But some won’t give us weapons and we go into their homes and take them by force,” he explained. The day before we met, he told me, El Jedek’s men took three AK-47s from the home of a supposed Qaddafi supporter. How did he know? Neighbors tell the local council who they think is stockpiling arms, he said, and El Jedek’s guys go in and try to nab them. The room with all the returned or repossessed weapons was brimming with rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, Kalashnikovs, missiles, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FN_P90">FNs</a> and anti-aircraft guns.</p>
<p>“We go to take their weapons because they are Qaddafi supporters and they are very dangerous,” El Jedek said. “Otherwise they would register them with us.” But there’s no way to really know who was on whose side, or which neighbors are just using the opportunity for unrelated vendettas. Soon, he said, they will ask all residents to register every weapon no matter who they are.</p>
<p>The most important thing for Libya, El Jedek told me, is to establish a national army—and fast. “Eventually, the brigades will leave and they will take all their weapons with them,” he said. “We’ll have a Libyan National Army and police force that the men can join.” And of course, he believes that career military men like him should be in charge of the new army, not random civilians-turned-rebel-commanders.</p>
<p>And what about those rebel fighters, the ones from outside Tripoli, who refuse to return from whence they came? El Jedek had a warning for them. “If they don’t leave, the Libyan National Army will remove them by force and power,” he said. “If we have to, we’ll do it.”<br /> </p>Thu, 03 Nov 2011 19:37:16 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/11/libya_after_qaddafi_dangerous_weapons_are_everywhere_.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-11-03T19:37:16ZQaddafi’s gone but his weapons aren’t, and they make the new Libya a very dangerous place.News and PoliticsQaddafi’s Gone But His Weapons Aren’t, and They Make Libya a Very Dangerous Place100111103015Libyan revolutionLibyan rebelsLibya after QaddafiMisrata rebelsTripoli rebelsLibyan citizen patrolsNational Transitional CouncilSarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/11/libya_after_qaddafi_dangerous_weapons_are_everywhere_.htmlfalsefalsefalsePhotograph by Abdullah Doma/AFP/Getty Images.A Libyan National Transitional Council fighter waves his rifleEgypt's Fundamentalist Summerhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/07/egypts_fundamentalist_summer.html
<p> MANSOURA, Egypt—The lease on the gleaming new headquarters of the Nour Party in Mansoura, a large city in the fertile Nile delta 90 miles north of Cairo, was signed just last week, and chairs still in their plastic factory wrapping are stacked against the lime green walls. Seated in the conference room, Sherif Taha Hassan, the spokesman for the local branch of this ultraconservative Islamist party, is beaming as we discuss its chances for success in Egypt's first parliamentary election since the revolution, <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2299193">tentatively scheduled for the fall</a>.</p>
<p>&quot;There is a large Salafi base in Egyptian society. Once people figure out the goals of the party and its [Islamic] reference, they will come to join,&quot; Hassan says, grinning. </p>
<p>Before this spring's Egyptian revolution, Salafis—adherents to a fundamentalist approach to Islam influenced by Saudi Arabia—eschewed politics. They declared democracy to be un-Islamic and instead said Muslims had a duty to follow a nation's leaders, even if they were dictatorial. In return for staying out of politics, their sheiks—religious leaders—were given broad influence in Egypt's religious discourse. Now the ultraconservatives are among the many disparate groups fighting for a piece of the political pie<em>. </em>The handful of religious<em></em>parties like Nour aren't just relying on their popularity in the mosques and on the TV airwaves; they have also begun vigorous campaigning in urban centers and in the countryside.<em></em></p>
<p>Today, Nour is printing shiny blue fliers, hand-painting placards, organizing community outreach meetings, and setting up volunteer medical teams to go into villages to treat the impoverished, as well as offering reduced-price prescription drugs bearing the party's logo at participating pharmacies, subsidized by Nour. The first Salafis in Egypt officially to register as a political party, Nour has already set up offices in 15 of the country's 27 governorates, more than can be said for most of the fledgling liberal parties, who remain worried about organizing effective nationwide campaigns before the vote.</p>
<p>Hassan, on the other hand, appears unconcerned about his ability to attract voters in a limited time. The rotund, bearded man in a shiny gray suit has been working nonstop since June, when Nour began collecting the 5,000 signatures needed to form a party. &quot;When people were signing, they were even donating their own money,&quot; he boasts. </p>
<p>Salafism is not a singular ideology with one leader; instead, it is a broad conservative movement that includes some extreme views. Salafis aspire to emulate the ways of the Prophet Muhammad's seventh-century companions, known as the <em>saluf</em>. In Egypt, most Salafi schools of thought are influential in particular geographic areas—Nour in Alexandria, Al-Fadila (Virtue) in Cairo, for example—and the possibility of alliances of different sheiks across the country bringing supporters to each other's campaigns may help all the Salafis at the ballot box. </p>
<p>The Salafis trying to form political parties have thus far stayed mostly neutral when it comes to controversial issues, but individual Salafi sheiks have made harsh statements to the Egyptian media denouncing the possibility of a Christian president and the right of women to assume positions of power. In southern Egypt, the appointment of a Christian governor in Qena sparked days of violent protests that shut down train lines and terrorized the local Christian minority. Several Christians were injured, and one man's ear was cut off in an attempt to impose &quot;Islamic punishment&quot;—showing that some Salafi sects can become a dangerous force to be reckoned with. </p>
<p>Whatever their numbers, the presence of vocal fundamentalist parties in the next parliament, which will be tasked with selecting the 100-member council that will be drafting Egypt's new constitution, may well affect policy discussions in this already conservative country. &quot;The Salafis could drag the parliamentary debate further to the right by setting the standard for 'Islamic authenticity,' saying that they represent the true voice of Islam,&quot; says Shadi Hamid, director of research at the Brookings Doha Center. </p>
<p>&quot;Once the discussion turns to religion and the [religious] text, it's a discussion that the Salafis are well-positioned to win. So that's the danger—that even though Salafis don't represent many Egyptians, they have a disproportionate effect because of their ability to frame the contours of the debate,&quot; Hamid added. Their influence is especially likely to be felt on issues such as women's rights and laws governing the sale and consumption of alcohol. &quot;People are going to be afraid of being called bad Muslims.&quot; </p>
<p>In his rheumatology clinic in the coastal city of Alexandria, the Nour Party's educational coordinator, Yousry Hammad, is trying to explain the difference between the group's adherence to fundamentalist interpretations of religious text and the policies it would implement. While Hammad fits the stereotype of an ultraconservative, with his long beard and a solemn manner, he has brought Tarek Shaalan, a clean-shaven, English-speaking party member, along to our interview. The interview quickly becomes a vague dance in which the two men struggle to apply what was once a discourse purely concerned with religious matters to everyday politics. </p>
<p>The two men insist that if Nour comes to power, no one will be legally obliged to obey its interpretation of religious laws, but the party will introduce Egypt to the correct understanding of Islam—something they say has been ignored by decades of secular dictators. For example, they say they will not force anyone to wear the <em>niqab</em> or even the veil; instead they will merely promote the &quot;traditional costume of Egypt.&quot; </p>
<p>At this point, Shaalan interjected to educate me on his country's history: &quot;Did you know that before 1919 everyone in Egypt was veiled—Christians, Jews, and Muslims?&quot; The veil, Shaalan<strong></strong>says, actually promotes women's rights, because beautiful women get better treatment. By putting on the hijab and loose-fitting clothes, a woman is saving her beauty for her husband and sending a message of self-respect. &quot;She doesn't have to look revealing or—I'm sorry to use the word—sexy for people to respect or treat her specially,&quot; Shaalan explains to me and the young, unveiled Egyptian female translator I'm working with.</p>
<p>&quot;Do you think the same thing applies to men?&quot; I ask. </p>
<p>Shaalan stutters his reply. &quot;You won't treat men differently, you know. She won't treat men differently because some man looks beautiful, but for men it happens,&quot; Shaalan says, and then he giggles nervously. We all shift uncomfortably as the two men try to resolve religious principles with the realities of everyday life.</p>
<p>Hammad, Shaalan, and I moved to the topic of Islamic jurisprudence. Eventually, Hammad concedes, the Nour Party will attempt to apply the whole of its fundamentalist understanding of Islam, which includes archaic punishments, like stoning adulterers and cutting off thieves' hands. &quot;But this is according to steps. This is not in one morning, that if I am the president of Egypt, I will come and cut off your hand,&quot; Hammad tells me. First, the Nour Party plans to fix the problems of economic disparity in the country, to reduce the factors behind such crimes, then, yes, it will move on to punishment. </p>
<p>And although the party members' answers might sound farfetched, the majority of Egyptians appear to agree. Most women in the country are already veiled. An <a href="mailto:http://pewglobal.org/2011/04/25/egyptians-embrace-revolt-leaders-religious-parties-and-military-as-well/">April 2011 Pew Research Center poll</a> found that 62 percent of Egyptians believe &quot;laws should strictly follow the teachings of the Quran.&quot; That is the Nour Party's platform in a nutshell. It remains to be seen whether Egyptians who agree with strict religiosity in principle will elect parties whose main platform involves legislating those attitudes. </p>
<p>Before Egyptians took to the streets to topple former President Hosni Mubarak, the only option for a religious vote were candidates from the Muslim Brotherhood, who ran as independents in Egypt's parliamentary elections. Despite the regime's attempts to restrict its participation in the political system by banning parties organized along religious lines, it was the best-organized Islamist movement in the country. These days, the Brotherhood has moved to the center and shows signs of fracturing, with members branching off to start their own political parties. The emergence of Salafi parties has broken the Brotherhood's monopoly on the religious vote and created an opening for more fundamentalist views. </p>
<p>Though involvement in politics may temper extremism, it could also drive the Salafis to express more radical views. &quot;The more Islamist parties you have, the more they have to compete with each other, and then they're going to want to outflank each other and outbid each other on who is most Islamist. That's what happens in these types of situations,&quot; says Brookings' Hamid. </p>
<p>The Salafis could well follow the path of the Brotherhood, which modified its once-strict religious principles to reflect the complexity of daily life and issued concrete programs such as economic and agricultural platforms rather than relying on religious principles. In the meantime, though, it seems that a popular uprising started in large part by young, liberal, Facebook-savvy activists has brought new opportunities for Egypt's ultraconservatives.</p>Thu, 14 Jul 2011 15:30:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/07/egypts_fundamentalist_summer.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-07-14T15:30:00ZCould an ultraconservative religious ideology be the biggest beneficiary of the Egyptian revolution?News and PoliticsEgyptian elections: Could the ultraconservative Salafis be the biggest beneficiary of the February revolution?2299139Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2299139falsefalsefalseWill the Egyptian revolution lead to more fundamentalism?Bahrain's Protesters Hope There Is Safety in Numbershttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/bahrains_protesters_hope_there_is_safety_in_numbers.html
<p> MANAMA, Bahrain—The overpass atop the Sheikh Khalifa Bin Salman Highway, one of the main roads leading into Pearl Square, is the best lookout point in Manama today. As far as the eye can see, throngs of protesters march in a seemingly never-ending line toward the epicenter of demonstrations against the monarchy.</p>
<p>Tens of thousands of men walk in neat lines, stopping to chant, &quot;The people want the downfall of the regime.&quot; The lines stretch almost two miles, from the Bahrain Mall to the square. Women, most in black headscarves and abayas, bring up the rear, completely blocking traffic. </p>
<p>Alongside me on the bridge, Hussein Allawi is leaning against his motorcycle. He is ferrying journalists up and down on his motorbike so they can take pictures of the crowds. &quot;That's my part in the protests. We're all trying to do what we can,&quot; the bike-store owner tells me. </p>
<p>Last night, Bahrain's state TV channel apparently claimed that there were only 500 people in Pearl Square on Monday, so Hussein and pretty much everyone else on the bridge is pissed. They want everyone to know that's not true—that there are thousands upon thousands of bodies amassed on the road. People keep coming up to journalists and asking: &quot;How many people are here? Three hundred? Five hundred?&quot; They follow the ribbing with some good-natured cackling. </p>
<p>I have no reliable way of estimating the crowd; the people stretch out of my range of vision, but there seem to be more than 100,000. That's quite a gathering, considering that there are only 500,000 Bahraini citizens; 70 percent of them are Shiite, while the ruling family is Sunni.</p>
<p>Empowered by events in Tunisia and Egypt, this Shiite-led upheaval has been raging since Feb. 14, but today's gathering is by far the biggest so far. Seven opposition groups, including the main Shiite political party, have called for a day of remembrance for the uprising's seven martyrs. </p>
<p>People walking to the square carry enlarged photos of the injured and killed as a gruesome reminder of the price demonstrators paid to maintain control of the square in last week's violent crackdown. Each night, rumors circulate through the tent encampment that tonight will be the night the regime attacks again. </p>
<p>Today's marchers were sure their numbers would protect them from violence, but a new anxiety has begun to creep into the emboldened masses—that their sacrifices will be forgotten as the international media turns its attention to Libya, the latest country in the Middle East to become embroiled in a bloody battle for political rights. </p>
<p>&quot;We worry about Libya taking the focus. Libya is a bigger country, there is more killing there, and Qaddafi is known as a tyrant. Our government is loyal to the West, unlike Qaddafi,&quot; Sayed Bader, an engineer in the Ministry of Works, told me. &quot;We're getting worried that journalists are leaving. They are our reflection and voice to the world.&quot;</p>
<p>Others echo Sayed's concerns. The other night in the square, Nour, a young activist, ran up to me to ask whether I had reported on Egypt's revolution. He beamed when he found out I'd <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2284709/">come from Cairo</a>. On Monday night, wrapped in a scarf and wearing a dark trench coat, Nour approached me again, asking whether I would be leaving Bahrain for Libya. &quot;We need to do something big,&quot; he said, a deep crease lining his face. &quot;Something big and peaceful, so we don't lose momentum.&quot;</p>
<p>Perhaps Tuesday's protests were that &quot;something big.&quot; Tonight, the Pearl is still packed with people calling for political reforms. But Bahrain's protests are not just about political representation—they are rooted in demands for social and economic equality. </p>
<p>&quot;We protest because we have demands: freedom, better wages, and fixing our living conditions,&quot; Abbas Hussein Hassan, a carpenter, tells me in his house in a low-income Shiite village. He lives in a two-floor home with 19 other family members. </p>
<p>&quot;The whole thing has to go: the ministers, the king, everything,&quot; he said. &quot;I'm 48 years old, and this is the only situation I've ever known. We need to try to change it.&quot; </p>
<p>Abbas says he goes to the square almost every day after work—he won't skip a shift, fearing that he will be fired and replaced by a migrant worker. His house is shabby; the beige walls are smudged, and the brown carpet is worn. As we sit on pillows on the floor, a montage of Shiite clerics from around the world gazes down at us from a tattered poster hanging on a door. </p>
<p>His niece, Fatma Younis, graduated from university last year, but the 23-year-old doesn't have a job. &quot;I don't have anything to do but sit,&quot; she says.</p>
<p>Maryam Alkhawaja, a Shiite who works at the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, told me about the various kinds of social discrimination against Shiites. For example, religion classes in school are taught using a Sunni curriculum. She says teachers lower their students' exam scores if they don't provide the correct Sunni answers. &quot;Ever since they were young, they have had to sit in class and listen to people tell them they're not real Muslims,&quot; she says. </p>
<p>For its part, the government has called for a national dialogue, but so far the opposition has refused to negotiate, saying that certain conditions, such as the firing of the prime minister, must happen first. Others say they will not negotiate until the king steps down, an echo of the Egyptian revolution. </p>
<p>Although many say their demands are economic, this is the Gulf, and most people are relatively well-off compared with residents of other countries in the region, such as Yemen, where citizens are protesting. The problem seems to be in the distribution of riches between Sunnis and Shiites. </p>
<p>Maryam takes me to visit Shiite villages. We drive past Sunni neighborhoods of fancy multi-story mansions; we take a turn around the prime minister's quarters, which stretch for blocks and cordoned blocks. The Shiite villages are shabby in comparison, but they are so close to the Sunni properties that you can see why people are angry. (Of course, not all Sunnis live in these megamansions, but I have yet to meet any Sunnis agitating for change in the square.)</p>
<p>People also complain that Bahrain's security services import Sunnis from other countries to serve in the army and police force, because they don't trust home-grown Shiites. &quot;I can afford things, but do they listen to my voice?&quot; asks Abdulla Thamer, a young demonstrator who works in the Ministry of Labor. &quot;If a Pakistani is shouting at me in front of my kids, it's not about money, it's a matter of humanity.&quot;</p>
<p><em>Like&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Slate"><em><strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;on Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Slate"><em><strong>Slate</strong></em></a><em>&nbsp;and the&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slateforeign"><em><strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;Foreign Desk</em></a><em>&nbsp;on Twitter.</em></p>Tue, 22 Feb 2011 22:26:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/bahrains_protesters_hope_there_is_safety_in_numbers.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-02-22T22:26:00ZNow their biggest worry is that the international media will forget them as Libya takes center stage.News and PoliticsBahrain protests: Will Libya push Bahrain out of the media spotlight?2285998Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2285998falsefalsefalseBahraini anti-government protestersBullet Holes in the Bumper, Threats in the Mailhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/bullet_holes_in_the_bumper_threats_in_the_mail.html
<p> From a distance, there's nothing unusual about the trucks in Karachi's Shiren Jinnah rest terminal. Lines of empty fuel tankers are parked on the side of a main road, waiting their turn to be filled up near the harbor. Huddled outside the trucks, jovial drivers drink tea, chat, and kill time. It's only on closer inspection that the scars of war become evident. Bullet holes riddle the bumpers, and parked between the mammoth carriers are the charred skeletal remains of burnt truck carcasses awaiting repair.</p>
<p>These are no ordinary fuel tankers. The trucks parked in this rest stop are bound for Afghanistan, ferrying supplies to U.S. and NATO forces. And all the drivers know someone who has been killed on the clock—burnt alive in the cab or shot by militants bent on disrupting Western lines of supply for America's longest war.</p>
<p>Nowhere is the war in Afghanistan less popular than in neighboring Pakistan, and the local drivers hired to ferry supplies and fuel to troops are the ones paying the highest price. Men who risk their lives on the perilous roads from Karachi to Kabul or Kandahar are caught in a tangle of poverty, rhetoric, and the imminent threat of death.</p>
<p>&quot;Pakistan is more dangerous than Afghanistan now. I'm more scared here than there. There are forces helping us on the Afghan side. Here, we don't have help from anyone,&quot; explains Dilshad, a young Pashtun driver who has been carting fuel for NATO forces for the last three years. &quot;The Taliban are saying we're not supposed to help the West. Before, they used to warn us to stop, now they just kill us.&quot;</p>
<p>The reward for their labor is around $300 a month and assault from all directions. Drivers say they must lie to their wives, they can't face their neighbors, and they live in fear of the escalating threats from the Taliban, who have stepped up their assault on the supply line in Pakistan in recent years. More than 60 percent of the Pakistani population lives on less than $2 per day, so $300 a month can seem like a lot, but these drivers are generally supporting large families. </p>
<p>Pakistan's overland route is integral to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan—40 percent of NATO supplies are trucked in through two of the country's border crossings. The United States and NATO contract Pakistani companies to ferry fuel, cargo, and food from the port of Karachi into Afghanistan, leaving day-to-day management, insurance, and compensation up to their local operators. An average of 2,500 to 3,000 cargo trucks and 450 to 500 fuel carriers are plying Pakistan's roads on any given day. A typical journey, drivers say, takes 20 days there and back.</p>
<p>Each year has become more terrifying than the last, Dilshad tells me. Last month, a friend of his was killed when the Taliban set his truck ablaze on the Pakistani side of the route. On Feb. 7, <a href="http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/factbox-security-developments-in-pakistan-feb-7">gunmen torched five trucks</a>. On Jan. 30, <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hujaB1Yc_1EB6M8ScS7_Kso27seQ?docId=CNG.ce8f5a8a2f4a1273dfa8b36066e3bb55.3e1">three trucks were attacked</a>. On Jan. 21,&nbsp; <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jRng0zNm2-ZCykJ2W2fSQq5wkmTQ?docId=CNG.6c9112361ca8ab047a38f11b8af9539f.231">three separate attacks in Pakistan</a> &nbsp;left three trucks torched and one driver shot. On Jan. 19, Pakistan's&nbsp; <a href="http://www.dawn.com/2011/01/20/abducted-oil-tanker-drivers-found-dead-in-khyber.html">local press reported</a> &nbsp;the bodies of three kidnapped drivers were found peppered with bullets. Everyone gathered here has at least one tale of surviving a brush with death.</p>
<p>Drivers say the trucks' &quot;for export&quot; signs and their special license numbers make them easy targets. Defense analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi explains that long stretches of lonely roads snaking through restive provinces, like Baluchistan, provide a broad area for militants to target, and lax security around rest stops doesn't help. &quot;When they are parked in a large number in truck depots, these trucks are like sitting ducks, anybody can do anything,&quot; Rizvi said. Some attacks, Rizvi says, are not perpetrated by the Taliban, but by criminal looters who siphon off fuel or commandeer the battle gear and then torch the trucks. But aside from beefing up security around the depots, he thinks there's little the Pakistani government can do to prevent attacks.</p>
<p>Although the truckers don't pay for any damage the trucks suffer if they are attacked, they also don't get compensated if they're injured on the job. &quot;If we die, our families don't even get a coffee,&quot; Dilshad says, chuckling ruefully. He describes letters arriving at his house in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province (formerly known as the North-West Frontier province), warning him that he is a marked man and commanding him to halt his work. The dozen other drivers gathered around us nod in agreement. They have all received the same letters.</p>
<p>As U.S. drone attacks against militants in North Waziristan intensify, truckers say the perception of being associated with the West has become even more hazardous. In 2010, 118 drone strikes pounded Pakistan's tribal regions, according to&nbsp; <a href="http://counterterrorism.newamerica.net/drones/2010">a study by the New America Foundation</a>—that's roughly one bombing every three days, double the number of strikes the year before.</p>
<p>Drone attacks are touted as one of America's most effective weapons against insurgents, who hit troops in Afghanistan before seeking refuge across the porous border. But most Pakistanis believe that the targeted strikes kill more civilians than militants and are an affront to national sovereignty, though their government appears to allow them. Nearly 800 people were killed by drone strikes last year, and as of mid-February, there have already been nine strikes in 2011. </p>
<p>Working for the U.S. and NATO forces is so sensitive that most workers don't want to tell me their full names, while the higher-ups in the industry will only speak on condition of anonymity, for fear of retribution. Within their communities, drivers say they are ostracized for their work.</p>
<p>Many don't tell their families the specifics of what they do for a living; they claim the Taliban letters are a case of mistaken identity. &quot;I just lie at home. I say, 'I transport containers, not petrol,' because it's less dangerous. And I don't tell them I go to Afghanistan, just inside Pakistan,&quot; explains Irfan, another driver, who has been working the route for six years. &quot;Sometimes I think I want to get out of this industry, it's too dangerous, but I need the money,&quot; he says. &quot;It's not fair—the contractors get the spoils, while we go through the troubles.&quot;</p>
<p>And contractors don't hide their profits. One manager of a prominent fuel-contracting company is more than blunt. &quot;In the end, it's the poor man who loses; they are the ones most targeted by terrorists,&quot; he told me, while declining to be named because he worries about reprisals. He says his company provides compensation to injured drivers or the families of those who are killed in the line of duty, but the drivers I spoke to, some of whom worked for that company, say it's simply not true. They are charged for damage-insurance on the trucks, but they have yet to see a family collect when a driver is killed.</p>
<p>The company manager met me at a posh Karachi cafe. He wanted to stay away from the office so that no one would know he has spoken to the media. &quot;In a time of war, you're asking me why it's dangerous?&quot; he shot back when I asked why he doesn't want me to publish his name. Surely, I suggested, if the Taliban knows which trucks are for export, they also know which companies run them. &quot;Of course they know,&quot; he tells me, &quot;I just don't want to make a public display of it.&quot; His cousin was killed two months ago—kidnapped, tortured, and shot for working with the United States. He says in the last six years, militants have killed 50 drivers contracted to his company, which runs 1,500 fuel trucks.</p>
<p>&quot;You want to kill, and I help you. We work for you, and we also die for you. The drone attacks kill our children. When I go back to my village, people say, 'You gave the fuel for the drones that kill children and women,' and I don't have an answer,&quot; he says, suddenly singling me out as the representative of the entire NATO effort in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>He has stopped going back to his village in Waziristan's hinterlands. He has hired private security. &quot;We die for you. What do you do for us?&quot; he asked.</p>
<p>He answers the question himself. &quot;It's all about the money. The feeling among Pakistanis is we work with Americans, we like their money, but we don't like their faces,&quot; he grins sheepishly and looks down. I watch the heavy silver watch on his slender wrist brush the table as he wrings his hands.</p>
<p>&quot;I am in this business out of necessity,&quot; he tries to explain. &quot;If we don't help you, you would give it to India; that would be worse,&quot; he says, referencing Pakistan's longstanding rivalry and the fear that America will allow India a free hand in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>But at the truck terminal on the other side of the city, drivers' oil-stained palms stroke heavy beards as they pause to think of answers to my questions about why they cart war supplies through increasingly treacherous territory. For them, working with NATO is not about American foreign policy. &quot;I'm uneducated, I'm poor, and I can't do anything else. I need the money,&quot; says Khan, another driver. </p>
<p>Khan tucks his curly hair behind his ears and tells me the owner of his truck was killed yesterday. &quot;We just got a new warning from the Taliban to stop working on my last trip. Even the people of Pakistan are scared. The police won't let me stop to eat and fuel up. Hotels don't want to let us park in front because they're afraid. It's 100-percent dangerous. And the problem is, nobody gives a fuck about us.&quot;</p>
<p><em>Like&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Slate"><em><strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;on Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Slate"><em><strong>Slate</strong></em></a><em>&nbsp;and the&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slateforeign"><em><strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;Foreign Desk</em></a><em>&nbsp;on Twitter.</em></p>Tue, 22 Feb 2011 12:25:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/bullet_holes_in_the_bumper_threats_in_the_mail.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-02-22T12:25:00ZThe hard lives of the Pakistani truck drivers who ferry supplies and fuel to U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.News and PoliticsThe Pakistani truck drivers who supply U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.2285716Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2285716falsefalsefalseTruck drivers stand near their fuel tankers on the outskirts of HeratWhy Lara Logan's Sexual Assault Is Demoralizing for Egyptian Womenhttp://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/02/why_lara_logans_sexual_assault_is_demoralizing_for_egyptian_women.html
<p> Nazly Hussein doesn't look anything like Lara Logan, the CBS reporter who was attacked by a group of men on the night Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down. The 27-year-old education psychologist has long brown hair and almond eyes, and she doesn't stand out in a crowd like Logan did. But like most women in Egypt, she, too, has been sexually harassed on Cairo's streets.</p>
<p>What happened to Logan is every woman's nightmare, but it's also atypical. Most cases of sexual assault in Egypt are not as gruesome as Logan's experience, they are instead much like what happens to Hussein—a near constant stream of verbal harassment and the odd groping. A <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7514567.stm">2008 study found</a> 83 percent of Egyptian women said they had been sexually harassed, while 62 percent of men admitted to harassing women; 53 percent of men blamed women for &quot;bringing it on&quot; themselves. But there's one thing the numbers don't spell out: the psychological impact of frequent minor assaults—too trivial to report on their own—is debilitating. </p>
<p>But according to Hussein and from what I observed, Midan Tahrir during the 18-day Tahrir encampment was different. Logan's assault is even more demoralizing for Egyptian women because it comes at a time when they truly believe things are changing for the better.</p>
<p>Harassment was at an all-time low during the protests. Many told me at the time that was because the square felt like a &quot;family,&quot; withstanding attacks, first from the police, and then from regime-sponsored thugs. It all started on Jan. 25, the first day Egyptians took to the streets demanding their rights. &quot;On Tuesday, I went out on the streets really considerate of what I was going to wear, really considerate,&quot; Hussein remembers. </p>
<p>All day as demonstrators attempted to march into Tahrir, people were apologizing when they bumped into her, something Hussein marveled at because &quot;It's only normal for people to bump into you at a demonstration.&quot; And these people didn't just apologize. &quot;It was, 'I'm sorry, excuse me,' &quot; Hussein explained. &quot;I'm thinking: 'Excuse me'? Where was that yesterday? And the year before? And the year before?&quot; </p>
<p>After hours of fighting riot police barricades, she finally made it off side streets and into Cairo's central square, which would become the epicenter of Egypt's protests. &quot;At that point, for the first time people would come up and talk to me like a human being and not like a woman; it was great!&quot; Hussein gushed.</p>
<p>Other women I spoke with inside Tahrir at the time remarked on the same thing. Many hope their role in the revolt that removed Mubarak's 30-year regime has changed attitudes toward their gender. </p>
<p>Mariam, who didn't want her last name to be used, is sure of it. The 21-year-old high-school teacher is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the conservative Islamist group that may see legality for the first time since 1954 after Mubarak's toppling. </p>
<p>Women in the Brotherhood are not equal yet, Mariam said. But her peers know that &quot;There were a lot of women there; without them we couldn't show this complete view—that people demonstrating against the government were not only men or only Muslim Brothers, or only activists. No, it was all of Egypt.&quot; </p>
<p>There's never a safer place to be as a woman in Egypt than with members of the Brotherhood. Their male supporters frequently form human chains around groups of women to protect them from being groped. They did it to me when I was covering a demonstration for one of their parliamentary candidates in November 2010. They did it again on Tahrir Square; men linked hands to cordon off Brotherhood women. But after a while, they let go, in a sign of how much trust they had in their fellow protesters.</p>
<p>Gigi Ibrahim, a recent Egyptian-American graduate from the American University in Cairo, agrees things are changing in Egypt. Unlike Hussein and Mariam, Ibrahim was politically active before Tahrir. But being an activist at Egyptian protests over the years came with risks. Aside from the violent tactics of riot police wielding batons, there were targeted gender comments about a demonstrating woman's reputation, her family, and her propriety. </p>
<p>When a photograph of Ibrahim at a demonstration last year landed in a local newspaper, the Web site was flooded with comments. She remembers one of them well—it was from a police cadet. &quot;He commented and said something to the extent of, 'look at that girl she just goes to the protests to get sexually harassed' and obviously, I was attacked based on gender and not based on why I was there. Obviously, he was an idiot,&quot; she says. Ibrahim got him blocked from the Web site, she tells me, shaking her head. But other commenters weighed in, defending her online.</p>
<p>Ibrahim hopes that kind of behavior will be the norm now. &quot;Women were pivotal and had as important of a role just like the men in this whole revolution. They led chants; they told people go to that side or that side during the fighting.&quot;</p>
<p>Perhaps more important than if Tahrir changed men's minds on harassment, it has obviously changed women's concept of themselves. The protests empowered a generation of women who saw they could be taken seriously on a political stage that had previously been dominated by men. All of the women I speak to say they will fight harder for their political and gender rights. None of them are staying out of politics anymore.</p>
<p>To be sure, Logan stood out in the crowds, and foreign women experience even more advances than Egyptian women do. In the same study that I mentioned above, 98 percent of foreign women visiting Egypt reported being harassed. But it's still too early to tell whether or not the changes Egyptian women heralded in the square apply to foreigners as well. </p>
<p>Hussein has only been verbally harassed once since the protests, and instead of dealing with the guy by herself, she says a crowd formed in her defense, yelling insults and shaming the young man who catcalled her. She is working with her friends to start a social awareness campaign to bring the spirit and values of Tahrir to the masses that were not there. As for the continued episodes of harassment, Hussein thinks people who had not been part of the uprising are perpetuating it. Unfortunately, I tell Hussein, as I walked to meet her, I got catcalled several times. She is shocked. Although, Egyptian women hope the situation is improving, it remains to be seen if that change is universal. </p>
<p><em>Like </em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/slate"><em><strong>Slate </strong>on Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow </em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slate"><em>us on Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>Fri, 18 Feb 2011 20:24:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2011/02/why_lara_logans_sexual_assault_is_demoralizing_for_egyptian_women.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-02-18T20:24:00ZIt comes at a time when many women feel that street harassment is on the wane.Double XLara Logan sexual assault: how Egyptian women are reacting.2285524Sarah A. TopolDoublexhttp://www.slate.com/id/2285524falsefalsefalseWomen protest in EgyptWhere Egypt Made Historyhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/where_egypt_made_history.html
<p> In Cairo's Tahrir Square earlier this evening, Ibrahim Basateen is leaning against a railing, sipping tea from a white plastic cup. &quot;It's going to be us or him,&quot; he says, referring to President Hosni Mubarak. Everyone is waiting for a statement from the president's office, but after last night's disappointment, no one is expecting anything today. &quot;He'll probably leave next week,&quot; says Ibrahim, who works in the ministry of petroleum.</p>
<p>Minutes later, the square erupts in cheers. Ibrahim looks around—everyone does—as word spreads: Egypt's last pharaoh has fallen. After almost 30 years, Mubarak has ceded power to the military. For many young people gathered in the square, Mubarak is the only president they have ever known. Now he is gone.</p>
<p>There's so much cheering and shouting it's hard to hear. Everyone grips the waist of the person ahead of him, forming lines that snake around each to move across the square. Whistles sound in some kind of victory Morse code. &quot;The people have taken down the regime,&quot; people chant. Strangers squeeze hands, clasp arms, hug. </p>
<p>Yet there are small groups loitering on the sides of the square, not quite sure what to do with themselves. It is there that I see Omar Mazin, the editor of <a href="http://ikhwanophobia.com/">a Web site devoted to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood</a>. He pumps my hand in triumph. He is a big guy, and he is shaking all over; gulping air and rocking on the balls of his feet.</p>
<p> <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2284345/">When I wrote about him before</a>, Omar had asked me not to use his real name. &quot;Now you can announce it,&quot; he says. Omar's real name is Abdel Rahman Ayysh, and he wants you, reading in America, to know it. I double-check to make sure it's OK. His grin is so wide, I can't help but think his face is bound to hurt tomorrow. &quot;I'm not afraid of the government stopping me in the airport anymore,&quot; he says. &quot;I'm 21 years old and this is the first time in my life to be free.&quot; </p>
<p>Abdel Rahman wrings my hand half a dozen more times before scampering off to find his friends. He's going to be in the square celebrating all night.</p>
<p>He and many others like him have spent long nights in the square. Different political groups have set up camp in different parts of the square, forming a mini-city of neighborhoods for almost three weeks. The ElBaradei Association for Change kids are pitched up under a statue on a far side of the square. Some of them are still bandaged from the violence. Magid Hamid has been sleeping there for 14 nights, ever since he was released from 48 hours of detention by the country's dreaded security services. (Human Rights Watch estimates that about 300 people died in this revolution.)</p>
<p>Tonight, Magid is chain-smoking cigarettes and looking around the square. It's hard to read his expression. Pride? Awe? &quot;I love this place more than my own home,&quot; he tells me, shrugging. And why not? This is where Egypt made history.</p>
<p>At the base of the statue, about 20 of the group's members are huddled across blankets, singing and chanting. Around them is a mosh-pit of movement and celebration, as revelers circle from all directions. Magid and I are standing on the outside of the seated mass. We wait for more of his friends to show up. Firecrackers are erupting somewhere in the square.</p>
<p>Tonight's scene in front of the statue couldn't be more different than last night's. When I left this crew yesterday, after Mubarak said he would stay in power until September, they were fuming. Tonight, it's hard to talk to them amid all the hugging. </p>
<p>Out of nowhere, Hezam El Sisi is back in the thick of things. Last night he was cracking jokes about how short he was. But his voice more than makes up for his stature. It carries over the group. He's standing and singing in the middle of the seated crowd. He climbs over everyone in an effort to reach me. </p>
<p>&quot;I am so happy, so happy, so happy,&quot; Hezam keeps repeating. &quot;Yesterday I was so sad! You remember?&quot; he shouts. And I do, but before I can answer, Magid seizes him in an embrace. He kisses his shaved head and shoves Hezam over to me. &quot;This is the best moment of my entire life,&quot; Hezam yells. Everyone is yelling. It is the only way to be heard. </p>
<p>Hezam tells me he heard the news of Mubarak's resignation over the phone from his sister as he was standing outside the presidential palace. He told Tarek Nowar, a friend from college. But they lost each other on the way back to the square, and Hezam isn't sure where Tarek is. Minutes later—everything seems to be working out for the best today—Tarek appears. &quot;I didn't believe him,&quot; Tarek laughs. &quot;I kept screaming at him, 'Are you sure?'&quot;</p>
<p>Last night, after hearing Mubarak address the nation, Tarek looked as if he was about to slit his wrists. &quot;Why didn't he resign yesterday?&quot; Tarek asks, shaking his head. &quot;What the fuck was he waiting for?&quot;</p>
<p>When I first met Tarek in October, he was a political neophyte. An interior designer, Tarek was moved to participate in politics by the return of Mohammed ElBaradei, the Nobel-winning ex-chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Tarek's mother didn't like his newfound hobby, and his wife wasn't thrilled, either. He told them he didn't care what they thought and started agitating for change.</p>
<p>I ask Tarek what will happen tomorrow, and he takes it literally: Everyone will clean up the square, he says. No, I respond. What happens to <em>you</em> after all this? Egypt's youth has been politicized. Can they go back to being doctors, engineers, small business owners? </p>
<p>Tarek isn't sure. &quot;When I first started this, I remember clearly, I was talking to my friend. He asked me, 'Are you in politics now?' I said, 'No, I just want to change Egypt for the better.' But now, I'm not sure.&quot; He gestures at the celebration all around him. &quot;I had a role in this,&quot; he says. &quot;My role will not stop here.&quot;</p>
<p>Then I see another face from last night, Mohammad El Tayeb, a natural-born comedian with an expressive face. He runs up to me, shakes my hand and starts flapping his arms. &quot;I want to fly!&quot; he says. Then he runs away. Last night he was almost in tears.</p>
<p>All around us in the square, it's mass pandemonium—whistling, singing, chanting. It's hard to talk to anyone for more than a few minutes. I have more questions, but no one is interested in answering them. They're too busy hugging and cheering. &quot;There's a proverb in Arabic,&quot; Tarek tells me as I struggle to keep his attention. &quot;Today we party, tomorrow we think.&quot;</p>
<p><em>Like&nbsp; <a href="http://www.facebook.com/slate"><strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;on Facebook</a>. Follow&nbsp; <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slate">us on Twitter</a>.</em></p>Fri, 11 Feb 2011 23:16:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/where_egypt_made_history.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-02-11T23:16:00ZA report from Tahrir Square on the day Mubarak resigned.News and PoliticsA report from Tahrir Square on the day Egyptians made history.2284709Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2284709falsefalsefalseEgyptian protestersRage Against the Regimehttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/rage_against_the_regime.html
<p> It was dusk in Cairo when the rumors began to circulate: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would be addressing the nation, and sources quoted in the American media suggested he would step down. Drums were beaten. Chants were sung. High-fives were slapped. But underneath the jubilation and excitement was anxiety.</p>
<p>By a statue on the side of Tahrir Square, the ElBaradei Association for Change had set up shop. The youth group formed after Mohammed ElBaradei, the Nobel-winning former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, returned to Egypt. The evening was turning into a party, and Mohammed El Tayeb his friends were cracking jokes to entertain the crowd. </p>
<p>Mohammed listed some of America's presidents in his lifetime: Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush. &quot;It's not fair,&quot; he yelled, jabbing the air with the staff of a miniature Egyptian flag. &quot;You have all these presidents and I've only had one!&quot; Mohammed, 29, has been arrested five times in the last year. He was agitating for change even before the Jan. 25 protests began. &quot;Mubarak doesn't understand the people,&quot; he shouted to the crowd. &quot;Obama has a Facebook page, Mubarak doesn't even have e-mail!&quot; It's a funny line, but I wasn't sure he was joking. His face was earnest.</p>
<p>Hezam El Sisi, another activist, chimed in. &quot;There's a Mubarak college, Mubarak school, Mubarak hospital, Mubarak airport, and a Mubarak train station,&quot; he said. &quot;Sometimes I feel like this guy married my mother. He's everywhere.&quot;</p>
<p>Hezam and Mohammad weren't speaking so much as yelling. Everyone was. The youth of Egypt's revolution were running on some kind of fatalistic do-or-die adrenaline, pulling all-nighters for two weeks straight, drinking six cups of tea and then trying to make sense of everything to a foreign journalist. It was the kind of humor that only happens when someone is on his deathbed. When it's either laugh or weep. </p>
<p>The group of about 20 young people posed for a photograph—something to remember tonight by—even though no one knew, then, what kind of memory it would be. We were all waiting to hear Mubarak address the nation, and no one actually knew what he was going to say. </p>
<p>The ElBaradei kids had taken up vigil, spread out across blankets, waiting. It was like the calm before a storm. Then someone in the crowd shouted: <em>Mubarak is about to speak!</em> The guys pulled out their hand-held radios, plugged in their headphones and shared the earphones. Hezam backed out of the cluster and crouched on the blanket. &quot;I don't want to listen,&quot; he told me. &quot;I'm afraid of what he's going to say.&quot;&nbsp; </p>
<p>The square around us suddenly went quiet. People shushed their neighbors. Tarek Nowar, another activist, and Mohammed were sharing a radio. Hezam stood up to join them. Tarek put his arm around Hezam's shoulders; the two have been friends since college. Like everyone else, they strained to hear the transmission. It turned out to be the national anthem. Tarek and Mohammed started singing along. Everyone smiled and joined in. </p>
<p>This was taking forever. Mohammed cracked a joke: &quot;I'm worried my battery will die before he speaks.&quot; The girls nearby giggled. &quot;I bet he's not talking because he's in the bathroom,&quot; Hezam said, to more laughter. Tarek pulled off his headphones in disgust. Everyone sat back down. There was to be more waiting, more jokes. </p>
<p>&quot;It's hard to describe how I feel,&quot; said Tawfik Gamal, a medical student. &quot;I don't think, having a dictator like Mubarak, [that] you can really foresee anything. He keeps slapping us and we don't really know why.&quot; </p>
<p>Suddenly another hush rolled over the square. Mubarak had started speaking. Everyone gathered around Tarek, who was listening from his headphones and trying to repeat what he heard. But he was too nervous. He couldn't breathe, he was shaking, he kept messing up the speech. </p>
<p>Then, just as suddenly as the hush, a voice filled the square. It sounded like the voice of God. As thousands stood with heads bowed in complete silence, straining to hear the omnipotent voice booming across the expanse, Hazem held his hands over his face. Tarek held his arms up, fingers laced through his hair. Mohammad stared at me, shaking his head. </p>
<p>As the speech continued, people began breaking off to cluck their disapproval. Their neighbors quieted them. A little girl sitting on her father's shoulders energetically waved a flag, but few noticed. As Mubarak continued to speak—his speech lasted 17 minutes—people sank into themselves. The crowd was literally deflated. As soon as he was done, one chant went up through the crowd: &quot;Leave!&quot; </p>
<p>But Mubarak had just explained that, though he will hand over power to Vice President Omar Suleiman, he will remain in office until the elections scheduled for the fall. &quot;I don't know how I feel,&quot; Tarek said. &quot;I feel like I've been cheated. … He said he'll continue until September, so he'll still fuck those people until September.&quot; The giddy excitement of earlier in the night was gone. His eyes pleaded with me: No more questions tonight.</p>
<p>As I leave the square, I ask for any final thoughts. The guys near the statue can only think of one thing to tell me in English: &quot;Motherfucker.&quot;</p>
<p><em>Like&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Slate"><em><strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;on Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Slate"><em><strong>Slate</strong></em></a> &nbsp;<em>and the&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slateforeign"><em><strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;Foreign Desk</em></a><em>&nbsp;on Twitter.</em></p>Fri, 11 Feb 2011 01:15:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/rage_against_the_regime.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-02-11T01:15:00ZA report from Cairo as jubilation turns to disappointment and anger.News and PoliticsEgyptian protests: A report from Cairo as jubilation turns to disappointment and anger.2284663Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2284663falsefalsefalseProtests in EgyptSibling Rivalrieshttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/sibling_rivalries.html
<p> Omar Mazin doesn't want to meet me anywhere except Tahrir Square today. He says it's just not safe. It's also not safe to use his real name—Omar Mazin is his work name. He has a risky job running <a href="http://ikhwanophobia.com/">a Muslim Brotherhood Web site</a> devoted to debunking myths about the officially banned but widely popular religious group. The site is an English primer on the group and Islam in general. &quot;It explains that we are not terrorists and that there is a moderate alternative to Egypt's regime,&quot; he says.</p>
<p>Using the threat of a radical Islamist takeover as a reason for the country's lack of political freedoms, the Egyptian government has jailed scores of members in the brotherhood's 82-year history. If Omar's work has been dangerous in the past, it's now also gaining new prominence. On Sunday, for the first time, members of the brotherhood met with Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman to discuss the upheaval that has brought the country to its knees. Being part of the negotiations is a coup for a group that has been demonized by the regime. But the limelight has its drawbacks—mainly, causing and exposing friction within the group. </p>
<p>The group's youth movement—the Brotherhood Youth—has been on Tahrir Square since Day 1, three days before their older leadership officially threw its weight behind the protests. So when news broke that the brotherhood was negotiating with the regime, many of their young members tell me, it was a huge letdown. </p>
<p>&quot;For me, it means they are not representing their youth,&quot; Omar says. &quot;I believe there are some internal divisions about talking to the regime. Protesters here say anyone that met the government before Mubarak stepped down doesn't represent us anymore.&quot;</p>
<p>Others who are part of the Brotherhood Youth agree. &quot;We said we wouldn't have talks with anyone until Mubarak leaves,&quot; says Sarah Mohammed, an 18-year-old member. &quot;Some people were thinking they must leave&quot; the brotherhood because of the meeting, she says. </p>
<p>She and I are sitting in the mosque-turned-makeshift hospital, where for days doctors have been treating the hundreds of protesters injured by the regime. Around us, nurses and doctors check supplies. The hospital is extremely well-managed, with an ICU, an orthopedic clinic, a pharmacy, and more. It's just the kind of organizational feat the brotherhood is known for. The brotherhood has long run schools, hospitals, and charities in Egypt, and part of the reason it is so popular is that they are better run than the government's. </p>
<p>But everyone here is quick to acknowledge that the hospital, the barricades, the body searches to get in and out of the square—these have not been organized by the brotherhood. Everyone also acknowledges that the brotherhood did not start the revolution. But no one can argue that the brotherhood is not essential to maintaining it. </p>
<p>&nbsp;&quot;We are the most organized, powerful group in Egypt,&quot; Sarah says, with membership in the hundreds of thousands. &quot;This wouldn't have happened at all without the brotherhood members. Ask anyone from other groups.&quot; </p>
<p>I do, talking to members of other secular groups, and as promised no one discounts the contribution of the brotherhood. But measuring that contribution is very difficult. It's not like those who belong to the brotherhood—which remains banned in Egypt—walk around with pins signifying their membership. </p>
<p>Hassan Selim has no political affiliations. The 23-year-old law student has been listening to my conversation with Sarah, and he interrupts us by showing us an article from a state-run newspaper that says the brotherhood runs the hospital we are sitting in. He finds the story extremely upsetting. &quot;The people here are working for Egypt, they are not working for the brotherhood,&quot; he says forcefully. At the same time, Hassan notes that most of the doctors in the hospital are members of the brotherhood. He has been camped out here for two days, documenting every injury he sees on a laptop, part of a team of people who are collecting evidence against the government. </p>
<p>Another protester, who works in a think tank supported by the brotherhood, joins us in the cordoned off area inside the hospital. He estimates that members of the brotherhood make up 20 percent of the protesters in the square. At night, people say the proportion increases to maybe 35 percent. The women who spend their nights on the square with young children, everyone agrees, are probably overwhelmingly members of the brotherhood. </p>
<p>As we talk, the head doctor pokes his head into the tent. I ask if he's also a member of the brotherhood. &quot;No titles at all!&quot; he screams. &quot;This hospital has no titles at all, Muslims, Copts (Christians), anyone. No titles at all!&quot; I leave the area while others calm him down. But he never did answer my question. Later I see him walk out of the hospital flanked by brotherhood members I know. </p>
<p>Moaz Abdel Karim is a member of the Brotherhood Youth and a delegate to the Coalition of the Youth of the Egyptian Revolution, an umbrella organization of different youth groups trying to represent the interests of the people in the square. He is quick to say his group is only part and parcel of the occupation of Cairo's main square. He will not claim credit for any particular aspect of the uprising, saying he shares it equally with his co-organizing groups. </p>
<p>He is also quite clear that he was upset by the actions of his leadership. When the representatives from the brotherhood met with the regime, he called them to ask why. &quot;If the brotherhood takes a decision to negotiate with the government,&quot; he says he told them, &quot;this will make a problem between us and the rest of the groups here.&quot; Moaz says, however, that he was reassured that the leadership will not commit to anything without the support of its young people.</p>
<p>Yet there can be little doubt that the events of the last two weeks, while they have raised the public profile of the brotherhood, have also raised tensions within it. Not that anyone at the brotherhood is willing to acknowledge as much. When I ask Essam El-Erian, a frequent spokesman for the brotherhood leadership, about divisions in their ranks, he tells me: &quot;That is not correct. All Muslim Brotherhood are united behind their leader.&quot; Then he hangs up. </p>
<p><em>Like&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Slate"><em><strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;on Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Slate"><em><strong>Slate</strong></em></a> &nbsp;<em>and the&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slateforeign"><em><strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;Foreign Desk</em></a><em>&nbsp;on Twitter.</em></p>Tue, 08 Feb 2011 22:31:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/sibling_rivalries.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-02-08T22:31:00ZAs the protests in Cairo continue, the Muslim Brotherhood faces internal tension and a generational divide.News and PoliticsEgyptian protests: The Muslim Brotherhood faces internal tension and a generational divide.2284345Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2284345falsefalsefalseDemonstrators pray in Tahrir&nbsp;SquareVoicing Oppositionhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/voicing_opposition.html
<p> When I approached Nagla Nasser in Cairo's central square Sunday, she told me she was too old to talk to a reporter. &quot;This is a youth revolution,&quot; said Nasser, who looks to be no older than middle-aged. &quot;You need to talk to someone young.&quot; Exactly. But the question facing the popular revolt against the rule of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is who speaks for the young protesters in the square. Egypt's youth has been instrumental in starting this uprising. Now everyone is asking who will finish it.</p>
<p>Today, I asked Tarek Nowar, an activist whom I have spoken to a lot in the last two weeks, if he'd heard of a revolutionary youth council representing the interests of the people in Tahrir Square. He responded: &quot;Which one?&quot; For almost two weeks, the sight of hundreds of thousands of leaderless Egyptians calling for the ouster of Mubarak has been inspiring. Suddenly, it has become confusing. The revolution appears to have no organized leadership, and meanwhile the Egyptian regime is back to doing what it does best: Divide and conquer.</p>
<p>On Sunday, Egypt's heretofore-organized opposition met with new Vice President Omar Suleiman. That included representatives from the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, officially sanctioned political parties, most of whom have no real support, as well as &quot;youth representatives.&quot; In the square, there was confusion as to who exactly was attending those meetings. </p>
<p>One prominent opposition figure told me the Brotherhood would never meet with the regime. He was wrong; they were there. The people who met Suleiman were carefully selected for global audience—chosen to represent the spectrum of people amassed in the square. The Egyptian press center sent the international media an e-mail message saying there had been &quot;consensus&quot; between Suleiman and the opposition. The groups in attendance told the media otherwise. Fair enough. And then there were those like Mohammed ElBaradei, a leading opposition figure and former head of the IAEA, who said they <a href="http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE71604D20110207">had not even received an invite</a>.</p>
<p>On Friday, there were reports of a group that people have taken to calling <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/behind-closed-doors-the-wise-men-take-on-the-politicians-2205851.htmlhttp:/www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/behind-closed-doors-the-wise-men-take-on-the-politicians-2205851.html">the &quot;Wise Men</a>,&quot; consisting of Egyptian intellectuals and respected business leaders, which had a plan to ease the transition of power. Another group, calling themselves the Coalition of the Youth of the Egyptian Revolution, announced they had planned the Jan. 25 protest, the day that sparked the upheaval. They said they hadn't met with the government—nor would they. They also insinuated they were the ones representing the people of Tahrir and told me they would be taking their demands to the government only through the &quot;Wise Men.&quot;</p>
<p>According to youth coalition, they are composed of five of the country's established youth groups, including the Sixth of April movement, the Muslim Brotherhood Youth, and the National Association for Change. Each of them appointed two members to a 10-member council. </p>
<p>&quot;None of us are in negotiation&quot; with the government, said Mohammad Abbas, Brotherhood Youth's representative to the council told me. &quot;We'll only negotiate after the removal of Mubarak.&quot; </p>
<p>But the group's very existence raises an even more basic question: If these are the guys behind this big protest, where have they been for the last two weeks? The group tried to &quot;hide&quot; its role in organizing the protests &quot;so people can feel this [movement] belongs to them,&quot; Abbas told me. &quot;We didn't want to appear publically, until the regime started saying the Egyptian youth were negotiating with them. Then we had to announce ourselves and appear.&quot; </p>
<p>Nasser Abdel Hamid, who represents the International Association for Change (a splinter group of the National Association for Change) on the council, explained the coalition had put conditions on negotiations, including abolishing the country's notoriously draconian emergency law. If those conditions are met, he said, they will meet with Suleiman. When I asked him if people on the street will object to a self-appointed &quot;youth council&quot; speaking for such a broad array of voices in the square, Nasser was unconcerned. &quot;This will not happen,&quot; he said. &quot;All of the youth movements are with us.&quot; </p>
<p>But I find that this is not exactly the case. Some people, such as activist Gigi Ibrahim, are actually quite upset. &quot;Nobody should represent anybody. Our demands are so clear, they are written on the walls, on the buildings. No one negotiates before the demands are met,&quot; she said. &quot;A handful of people can't possibly represent the people on these streets.&quot; </p>
<p>Ibrahim said she attended the planning meetings for the Jan. 25 demonstration but argued that didn't give her the right to speak for the masses. &quot;No one in their mind during those meetings thought this would turn into a revolution,&quot; she said. &quot;Post-Jan. 25, nobody was running the show. It was people acting on their own . … I took part as a revolutionary socialist, but I'm not going to say because I made a Facebook group I have the right to represent these people. This is a people's revolution. Facebook and Twitter didn't make this revolution.&quot; </p>
<p>There are other protesters who have been on the square for days and have simply never heard about any debate over representatives at negotiations. &quot;I think the system is trying to find any way out without enacting the changes the youth are looking for,&quot; said Ali Gheital, a doctor who has been treating injured protesters. &quot;They are trying to find a way out, so they started talking to the opposition, but the opposition doesn't control the people.&quot; </p>
<p>Then there are those who are hopeful. &quot;At the end of the day, no one is in control at the moment,&quot; Hossam el-Hamalawy, a blogger and journalist told me. &quot;There is a problem of which way to go forward and there are many opportunist politicians who are trying to jump on the movement and trying to hijack it and that would include those who have already gone to negotiate with Omar Suleiman before Mubarak's leaving.&quot; Hossam said he is &quot;totally against negotiations with the regime as long as Hosni Mubarak is in power&quot; and opposed any talks with &quot;his torturer-in-chief, Omar Suleiman.&quot; </p>
<p>Yet others, such as Nasser of the youth council, have said they <em>would</em> talk to Suleiman. I asked Hossam if it's possible the movement could spin out of control. &quot;It's inevitable in any revolution, you'll always find divisions, and people with disagreement,&quot; he said. &quot;The only referee will be the people here in the street.&quot;</p>
<p><em>Like&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Slate"><em><strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;on Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Slate"><em><strong>Slate</strong></em></a> &nbsp;<em>and the&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slateforeign"><em><strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;Foreign Desk</em></a><em>&nbsp;on Twitter.</em></p>Mon, 07 Feb 2011 22:19:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/voicing_opposition.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-02-07T22:19:00ZNot even Cairo's protesters agree on who speaks for Cairo's protesters.News and PoliticsEgyptian protests: Who speaks for the young people gathered in Tahrir Square?2284226Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2284226falsefalsefalseEgyptian anti-government demonstrators chant slogans as they hold a symbolic funeral for journalist Ahmed Mohammed MahmudRevolutionary Logisticshttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/revolutionary_logistics.html
<p> On top of a decrepit building at the front line of the continued battle for control of Cairo's central square, anti-regime protesters in hardhats swapped shifts this morning after another night of peaceful demonstrations against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak. The roof's high vantage point has turned into a lookout post into &quot;enemy lines.&quot; From here, demonstrators keep watch, spying for the armed thugs that <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2283323/">laid siege on the square earlier this week</a>.</p>
<p>We are overlooking the no-man's land that is the street below, where for the last few days Mubarak supporters and protesters against the regime have hurled stones and worse at one another. &quot;You can see everything from here, everything far away, any attack,&quot; says Abdel Rahman Gamil, an Islamic law student who has been helping keep watch. &quot;If it comes, we whistle and inform people in the square so they can come here to back us up.&quot;</p>
<p>The protesters are well organized: To get here, my ID has been checked twice—once coming into the apartment block and again to get onto the roof. And the organization extends to more mundane aspects of daily life, such as bathrooms, cell phone chargers, and drinks. In a surreal moment of normalcy, I find myself accepting sweet black tea from Abdel, served in a small white plastic cup. Nothing in Egypt is complete without tea. Someone has jerry-rigged the building's electricity, and the lookout encampment has its own electric kettle. </p>
<p>On <a href="http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/latest-updates-on-day-12-of-egypt-protests/">Day 12 of continued upheaval in Egypt</a>, the protesters are worried the army is removing its makeshift barricades. There are four lines of defense to enter the square from the &quot;hot zone&quot; where most of the clashes with pro-Mubarak forces have taken place. </p>
<p>Onlookers say they've stopped the army from dismantling the metal barricades. It's rumored the army might retreat today, so groups of men and women squat on blankets in front of the tanks. </p>
<p>Beyond the square, there are worries as well. Mubarak is still in office, and though the papers have reports of negotiations to remove him from office, that's not enough to clear the square. Egypt's spontaneous protest has turned into a sustained public mobilization. The main square here has become its own city.</p>
<p>And as it turns out, it's hard work trying to change your government by taking over the capital's main intersection; there are all kinds of logistical things to worry about. The strange thing is, it looks like they have all been solved. The center and sides of the square today look like a shantytown more than a protest. Sheets and blankets have been rigged up into makeshift tents. It's freezing here at night.</p>
<p>A few nights ago, at almost 4 a.m., I watched men run circles around the square. &quot;They are very strong and high in spirit,&quot; Amr, a software engineer, told me. A young man overhearing our conversation interrupted. &quot;It's not about spirit or anything,&quot; he said. &quot;It's about cold.&quot; He would know—he was one of the runners.</p>
<p>The software engineer, Amr, has been sleeping on the ground. His wife Reem, a project manager, takes shelter from the cold in the square's main mosque. There's a section for women there. I ask if they ever tire of protesting. It's an unpopular question—all anyone wants to talk about is his or her resolve—but I suspect there's only so much chanting you can do.</p>
<p>&quot;When I get bored,&quot; Reem said, &quot;I think about all the battles the last few days … then I think I have to stay.&quot; But there are also other stranger questions as well. Such as: Where do thousands of people pee?</p>
<p>&quot;This is the main problem,&quot; Amr told me, and then explained the men have three choices: the metro station (i.e. the submerged sidewalk going to the underground which has been shuttered for over a week), and the bathrooms of two mosques. If you're a woman, there's only one option: the women's section of the square's major mosque. That's also where many women, especially those with children, sleep.</p>
<p>As we entered the mosque, I got a gentle pat down and a soft apology for the inconvenience. Inside, women sit and chat in the dim light. The cool green tiles of the bathroom are a far cry from the open sewer just 10 feet away from the entrance. There are only two working stalls, but they are immaculate.</p>
<p>Outside the mosque is more mass organization in action. As I left the women's section from the back, a cry rang out from the men's entrance. &quot;Army! Army!&quot; someone screamed to get the nearby soldier's attention.</p>
<p>A man was being dragged from inside the mosque. Other men surrounded him, one keeping a hand over the man's mouth. He didn't struggle. An informant, possibly plain clothed police—but the jig was up.</p>
<p>The men took him to nearby army officers and released him into their custody. Who knows what they'll do to him. Maybe they will keep him, but it's just as possible that they're under orders to release him back on the street. No one on the square really understands what the army is doing. The important is that they're still here, and that they haven't fired on the protesters.</p>
<p>There are other things too. In order to tweet a revolution, you have to charge your phone. Your family also wants to know you're OK. This morning someone jerry rigged a street lamp in the square. The lamp now provides electric charge to two power strips. On the ground next to them are too many cell phones to count. The man running the cell phone station doesn't know who set it up—his job is keeping track of the phones people are keen to recharge.</p>
<p>Azza Shaaban, a filmmaker, has been living on the square—in a tent or on the ground, depending on the night. It's loud and you don't get much rest, she said. &quot;Of course, it's not like sleeping in your house. It's not like camping,&quot; she said, chiding me for asking. &quot;We're doing something important. Revolution has a price, not just sleeping on the ground, they've been shooting at us.&quot; She eyed me indignantly.</p>
<p>People trawl the square selling blankets, food, cigarettes, phone credit charge cards, tea—you name it. The city within a city has its own garbage collectors. Most people say when they're not sleeping or volunteering, they're talking about politics. Doctors, farmers, unemployed men, activists—they all say they are talking about revolution and what comes next.</p>
<p>&quot;Revolution doesn't happen everyday—most people are talking about that,&quot; said an activist named Gigi Ibrahim. &quot;Maybe I'm tired, but I'm not bored. … Obviously some people will lose steam, that's a reality. But I know a lot won't.&quot;</p>
<p><em>Like&nbsp;<strong>Slate&nbsp;</strong>on&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/slate"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow us on&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slate"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>Sat, 05 Feb 2011 22:50:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/revolutionary_logistics.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-02-05T22:50:00ZWhere do the thousands of people gathered in Tahrir Square go to the bathroom?News and PoliticsEgyptian protests: How to collect trash, set up bathrooms and charge cell phones in the middle of a revolution.2284118Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2284118falsefalsefalseAnti-government demonstrators in Cairo's Tahrir Square&nbsp;Egypt's Protesters Puzzle Over Obama's Responsehttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/egypts_protesters_puzzle_over_obamas_response.html
<p> This morning, the lines to enter Tahrir Square snaked out into the streets as people came out in droves to join their fellow citizens demanding an end to Hosni Mubarak's regime on a day that protesters termed the &quot;Day of Departure.&quot;</p>
<p>People from all walks of life trekked to Cairo's central square. Nothing the government has done appears to have weakened their resolve. After two days of violent clashes, there was a sense that today's gathering needed to be even larger than before, and people showed up in swarms. Peaceful protesters took up lookout posts along the roads leading into Midan Tahrir, everyone doing their part to secure the square. </p>
<p>As people walked into Tahrir through even more security than on previous days, protesters lining the entrance applauded those who joined them. </p>
<p>During daylight hours, things have been peaceful in the square so far today—but no one is sure if that record will extend to tomorrow. The situation in Cairo remains unstable, fueled by rumors of a continued government crackdown, which has claimed the lives of at least eight in the last few days and injured thousands. In anticipation of more attacks, the square was peppered with people wearing hardhats. &quot;For you, it's construction, for us it's defense,&quot; commercial maritime officer Ahmed Nour told me, chuckling when I asked why he was wearing a white plastic hat. </p>
<p>For the 11<sup>th</sup> consecutive day, protesters arranged themselves by specialty—doctors took up posts at clinics, volunteers picked up trash and handled security, men and women walked around the square offering their services as translators to foreign journalists—showing a perseverance that continues to astound foreign observers, many of whom have been dealing with their own <a href="http://cpj.org/2011/02/mubarak-intensifies-press-attacks-with-assaults-de.php">threats</a> while <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/05/world/middleeast/05journalists.html?_r=1">trying to report on the story</a> here.</p>
<p>In a renewed sign of optimism, and despite the violence of the last few days, children appeared in the square again today. Not as many as before, but it is a sign that beleaguered protesters are willing to risk everything for their ideals. </p>
<p>&quot;I wanted my children to join me. I'm not afraid of the thugs, I believe we have to face them,&quot; Fatima Fowwzi, a mother of three, told me, balancing her 11-month-old on her lap. Fatima hadn't come to the square yesterday; she was afraid after deadly violence hit the streets on Wednesday night. Spats continued Thursday, but they didn't deter her for long. </p>
<p>Sitting on the curb next to her were her 4-year-old daughter, Reem, and another toddler. Her husband was nowhere in sight. &quot;He's here somewhere,&quot; Fatima said, shaking off the threat of violence. When I ask who would carry all those kids if she had to run, she says, &quot;I heard the interior ministry promised not to shoot today, I felt a little safer. Anyway, I believe God will protect us.&quot; </p>
<p>Even after days of violence, the morning's anxiety had given way to a carnival atmosphere by this afternoon. The movement is changing, hunkering down for the long haul. Everything the regime throws their way seems only to embolden protesters, many of whom stood shoulder to shoulder, creating multiple layers of human barricades at the entrances to the square. </p>
<p>Today, there were fewer hand-drawn signs than in the days before, as people counted on the sheer number of bodies to send their message. &quot;We're not leaving until he does,&quot; is the most common refrain. Walking around the square this afternoon, the biggest security threat seemed to be getting trampled by chanting protesters—whether or not that holds through the night is another story. </p>
<p>Many ask me about America, puzzling over the Obama administration's comments about the protests. There's a lot of frustration, but most say they want the United States to butt out. </p>
<p>&quot;This revolution is an Egyptian revolution against Mubarak and his policies—we don't want another client regime. We are capable of doing things without America. I don't need America to teach me about democracy or human rights,&quot; Amira Howeidy, a journalist, told me. A fluent English speaker, Amira got worked up, and then apologized. &quot;I'm not trying to be combative,&quot; she said as I tried to redirect the conversation.</p>
<p>Others just can't figure it out. &quot;Does Obama really want democracy in Egypt?&quot; one woman wearing a niqab asked me. Her friends joined in the conversation as they debated their options if Mubarak were to fly to London tomorrow. </p>
<p>This is a leaderless movement, so it is unclear exactly what conditions would have to be met for people to clear the square. Some don't want the new vice president, Omar Suleiman, to head a transitional government; others were OK with him being in charge for 60 days until parliamentary elections could be held. </p>
<p>Who they would vote for doesn't appear to be the issue right now. &quot;We don't care. We will think about that after [Mubarak] quits. We believe in the freedom to choose. Not only Mubarak can lead Egypt—there are a lot of good people here,&quot; Dina Zakaria, a feisty young woman in a purple headscarf told me. She is one of the protesters who would be fine with Suleiman heading a transitional government. She says, &quot;He isn't a dictator—yet.&quot;</p>
<p><em>Like <strong>Slate </strong>on </em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/slate"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow us on </em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slate"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>Fri, 04 Feb 2011 18:05:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/egypts_protesters_puzzle_over_obamas_response.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-02-04T18:05:00ZA dispatch from Cairo's Tahrir Square.News and PoliticsEgyptian protesters puzzle over Obama's response.2283994Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2283994falsefalsefalseEgyptian anti-Mubarak protesters&nbsp;in Tahrir square on Feb. 4, 2011Tahrir Square Is a Battlegroundhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/tahrir_square_is_a_battleground.html
<p> This morning, after a night of violent clashes that left five dead and 800 injured, anti-regime protesters in Cairo's central square braced themselves for further confrontations with Mubarak supporters.</p>
<p>The battle began Wednesday afternoon and lasted into the early hours of this morning, when the anti-Mubarak protesters regained their ground. Tonight, as clashes continue, they'll fight to hold on. And by the look of things, the square is ready for battle. </p>
<p>Inside Tahrir Square, on the grassy knoll where they have pitched tents to spend long, cold nights, the mood was both triumphant and sad.</p>
<p>&quot;If these demonstrators really are pro-Mubarak—I want to give them the benefit of the doubt—it's a shame,&quot; Nazly Hussein tells me. (It's widely believed that many of the pro-Mubarak participants in the rallies were paid thugs.) &quot;Knives, horses, camels, it's <em>so</em> Middle Ages,&quot; she exclaims, referring to the men brandishing whips who stampeded anti-regime protesters Wednesday. </p>
<p>Sitting on the ground in front of a tent, the special-education teacher regrets the clashes, but she is sure the protesters will prevail. The night was long, and though today promises more violence, she is determined. &quot;We have exceeded their expectations every time, and we'll continue to do so.&quot; </p>
<p>Walking to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/03/world/middleeast/20110203-tahrir-square-protest-diagram.html?ref=middleeast">the scene of yesterday's fierce battles</a> in front of the Egyptian Museum, you have to cross four makeshift lines of defense. At each post, demonstrators calling for Hosni Mubarak's immediate resignation have set up improvised lines. </p>
<p>At the very front, a barricade of metal sheeting forms a makeshift wall. And at noon today, when I stood on a milk crate to peer over the front lines, I could see that men on the other side of the tanks separating the groups were already hurling stones toward another anti-Mubarak stronghold. Of course, this was nothing compared with the Molotov-cocktail assault I watched from my balcony the night before.</p>
<p>Mohammad Ghad, a 30-year-old auditor, stands by the metal sheeting. If there is an assault, he will be the first one hit. He is already wounded, sporting a giant bandage on his head from where a rock hit him yesterday. &quot;I'm not afraid. Millions of Egyptians are not afraid. I have a good job. I'm here for other people, the ones who aren't as lucky as me. If they kill me, I asked my brother to take my place,&quot; he told me. </p>
<p>I leave the front line and come across the second point of resistance—trashed cars arranged in a line. Behind that is a metal railing with gaps people can climb through. Suddenly, as I stand in front of the gate, the battle cry sounds. Men bang sticks against metal in unison; the ominous sound summons guys from other parts of the square. They pour in calmly, as if marching to war. It's a patient kind of battle, in which you walk toward your opponent. Between the lines, hunched people gather broken bits of the sidewalk in sacks. The rubble will later serve as ammo for the people at the front. </p>
<p>Nevine Immam, a mother of three, is one of the people gathering rocks. &quot;All the past demonstrations had been peaceful. We had no weapons. Then they started with guns, horses, and camels. The last thing we had to defend ourselves with were stones,&quot; she says. Nevine is eager to throw some herself, but she thinks there won't be room for her to aim. &quot;I will pass the rocks on, but if I find space to throw a rock, I will,&quot; she vows and smiles.</p>
<p>The last line of defense is human. Men link arms to form a human wall across the broad boulevard. People passing into the square are asked for ID and patted down. &quot;We found weapons inside the square,&quot; the young woman who frisked me said. &quot;We don't know where they are coming from.&quot;</p>
<p>Behind the line of men is a makeshift clinic. As I walk by, a man who was a Muslim Brotherhood candidate in Egypt's parliamentary elections walks by with his followers. After him, a line of professors from Al Azhar University, the Islamic world's most prominent institution of learning, walk forward, linking arms. </p>
<p>Back inside the square, all is calm as protesters continue to flock to the square. The loudspeaker that is used to keep up morale also announces the names of the missing. Volunteers continue to bring in water, juice, and food, but there seems to be less available today, and it's hot, so people are thirsty. Later I hear that plainclothes police prevented many from bringing in supplies. </p>
<p>&quot;It's like a utopia here. We're really organized. We have a self-sustaining city. At 6 a.m. there is a <em>fuul</em> cart, [<em>fuul</em> is a popular Egyptian dish], a kiosk selling cigarettes, people are passing out food and water, [there's] a night watch,&quot; Nazly tells me. </p>
<p>As we sit on the ground, a man walks by holding a trash bag. He yells the name of Mubarak's ruling party as he calls for rubbish: &quot;National Democratic Party! National Democratic Party!&quot;</p>
<p>As the day drags on, and Mubarak clings to power, the atmosphere is buoyant. But whether the besieged protesters can maintain their city within a city is another story. Once again today, everyone repeats that they'll stay until the bitter end. </p>
<p>As I exit the square, I step over neatly arranged rows of rocks. Men sit on the sidewalk perusing newspapers. It's all calm until the battle cry sounds. </p>
<p><em>Like <strong>Slate </strong>on </em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/slate"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow us on </em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slate"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>Thu, 03 Feb 2011 21:07:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/tahrir_square_is_a_battleground.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-02-03T21:07:00ZDespite the violence, anti-Mubarak protesters are still convinced they will prevail.News and PoliticsEgyptian protests: The view from the battleground.2283751Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2283751falsefalsefalseEgyptian protestors near Tahrir square detain a pro-Mubarak supporter on Feb. 3, 2011Thousands of Men and No Groping!http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/thousands_of_men_and_no_groping.html
<p> This morning, the woman checking bags and body-searching demonstrators entering Cairo's central square had quite a job on her hands. As demonstrations in Egypt's capital entered their second week, she had volunteered to keep the rallying point safe. I'd encountered her at the same place yesterday, but today's search was a lot more thorough.</p>
<p>&quot;We heard people would be bringing knives and weapons to the square today. Bad people would try to stop us,&quot; she explained, as she frisked women in front of a metal barricade. &quot;They asked us to come. All of us are volunteers,&quot; she said, though she declined to tell me her name.</p>
<p>One woman waiting to enter puts up a fight, and the brisk, stout woman, who is a headmistress by profession, lays down the law: &quot;I am here to protect you. The military wants us to protect you—they don't have women, so we are here for you.&quot;</p>
<p>Unfortunately, at the end of a long day in Cairo, the headmistress's body-search seems to have been for naught. The place where she stood a few hours earlier is in flames as I type this. Last night, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/01/AR2011020106845.html">President Hosni Mubarak spoke to the nation</a> and said he would finish out his term but would not run in presidential elections scheduled for September. Protesters had been demanding his immediate resignation.</p>
<p>Today, pro-Mubarak rallies filled the city. And the conflict that followed marked a sharp departure from the peaceful protests of the days before. As I write, Mubarak supporters and anti-regime demonstrators are clashing in the streets below—throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks.</p>
<p>But whichever camp they find themselves in, this unprecedented moment in Egypt's history has also been a momentous time for Egyptian women, who I saw in droves at both the anti- and pro-Mubarak protests.</p>
<p>Over the last week, women joined men in the square and on the streets, calling for an end to the Mubarak regime. They brought their children—including young girls. Some even camped out in the cold.</p>
<p>Soheir Sadi was one of them. This morning, she sat in the square with her 14-year-old daughter. They had come every day since the protests started on Jan. 25. &quot;I came seeking my rights, like any Egyptian. I rent my apartment, I don't own it, and I can't afford food. What kind of life is that? And for my children?&quot; she asks. &quot;I wasn't afraid for my daughter, because everyone is family in the square. We are all real men standing up for ourselves, even the girls. And now they have learned that they can protect themselves like men.&quot;</p>
<p>Egypt has a sexual harassment problem. In a 2008 study, 86 percent of women said they had been harassed on Egypt's streets—any woman walking through a crowd of men in Egypt braces to get groped. But in the square, crammed in shoulder-to-shoulder, men apologized if they so much as bumped into you. After wandering around the protests for days, it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn't been groped, a constant annoyance when I'm faced with large crowds in Cairo. When I pointed this out to other women in the square, we all took a moment to reflect. &quot;I hadn't even thought of that,&quot; one woman in Tahrir told me. &quot;But it's because we're all so focused on one goal, we're a family here.&quot;</p>
<p>Today's pro-Mubarak rallies were also attended by women, who screamed slogans like, &quot;Don't leave, Mubarak.&quot; Many came from the poorer neighborhoods, prompting my taxi driver to suggest that many of them had been paid to join the crowd. But affluent women attended, as well. One of whom told me, &quot;This isn't yes to Mubarak; it's yes to stability and no to the Muslim Brotherhood.&quot; Many secular liberal elites in Egypt worry that the <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2283616/">Brotherhood</a>, officially banned but still the strongest organized opposition to Mubarak, will come to power if he leaves.</p>
<p>Then there were the women who switched sides. Farah Mohammed had been in Tahrir Square for the last few days, demanding that Mubarak resign. Today, she came instead to show her support for the only president she has ever known. &quot;We want to give him a chance,&quot; the 20-year-old with neon pink nails told me. &quot;If he left now, there would be a gap. The economy would fail. We want to work, to go out, and to live like we used to.&quot; Many Egyptians have expressed concern about the economic woes that have come to the fore as the city gradually closed down over the last week as protests raged. Many activists worried that Mubarak's Tuesday night address had sinister connotations, signaling an attempt to pit citizens against one another.</p>
<p>But women like Farah stayed on the streets this afternoon as two rallies clashed on the entry channels into Tahrir Square. Many people inside Tahrir were wounded and were taken to a nearby mosque-turned-makeshift-hospital for treatment—where women also took up positions.</p>
<p>The scene was frantic, as bleeding men were dragged through the streets for treatment. &quot;We've seen cuts, wood splinters from sticks, bleeding, very much bleeding from the head,&quot; one woman doctor called to me over the din. &quot;I treated one woman,&quot; she says, &quot;a brick hit her on the head.&quot; She was about to say more, but someone brought in a man with blood streaming down his face.</p>
<p>Back in the square, as we hear shouted reports that pro-Mubarak protesters armed with sticks are approaching, Samia, a young woman no older than 20, calmly smokes a cigarette. We can't see the clashes from where we are sitting. The last I checked, they were concentrated in one part of the square, but rumor has it they're heading our way. Samia has spent four nights sleeping in the square, and though she seems alert, she doesn't appear visibly shaken.</p>
<p>&quot;I'm not leaving,&quot; Samia tells me. &quot;I'd leave if I thought this was what the people really wanted. But they don't represent Egyptians. These are paid people—thugs. We are the majority.&quot;</p>
<p>As I try to find an exit point from the square, as the shouts of pro-Mubarak mobs continue to sound, Samia takes my arm and leads me to the nearest back alley. Then, she squeezes my arm, tells me to be safe, and returns to the center of the square.</p>
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<p> Hend is walking slowly, one halting step at a time. The 79-year-old pauses to rest on a raised curb across from two burned-out state security trucks and the looted headquarters of Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party. The streets surrounding Cairo's central square are closed to cars, and getting to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/world/middleeast/02egypt.html">massive gathering in Midan Tahrir</a> is taking a lot of energy, but Hend is unwavering. After five minutes, she gets up and starts shuffling forward again.</p>
<p>This is Hend's second time protesting. The first was in 1952, when the Egyptians overthrew the British. She was studying literature in college. Today she is a grandmother of three teenage boys. Even though&nbsp; she is moving slowly, with the aid of her daughter-in-law, and it's obvious that each step is difficult, she is smiling like crazy. &quot;I feel very, very happy,&quot; she tells me. &quot;We are making our future.&quot; </p>
<p>After the brief respite, she doesn't stop shuffling until she can see the crowds moving into the square. &quot;This is different from 1952,&quot; she reflects, as she rests again. &quot;Back then, it was everyone from college. Today it's all the people, from all levels of society. Today is more important. Then we were protesting the British; today the enemy is our government.&quot; </p>
<p>Egyptian protesters called Tuesday &quot;the day of the million man march,&quot; and they hoped to bring even more people into the square. For the last eight days, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets demanding an end to President Hosni Mubarak's nearly 30-year regime. Hend is only a few years younger than the man she is trying to evict. As she joins the throng, waiting to get past the parked tanks and into the square, it's obvious the day was a huge success. </p>
<p>But even after seven straight days of protests, no one really believed they would mobilize so many people today. </p>
<p>Earlier, some activists were worried. What if only thousands showed up? They needed a show of strength, something to keep up the momentum that has turned the world's attention on Egypt's plight. Once described as embattled and apathetic, Egyptians are now political agitators, staying on the streets through bullets, tear gas, and sound grenades. Today was imperative.</p>
<p>Three young men from the ElBaradei Association for Change, a group that had been working to mobilize people and have them sign a petition to reform constitutional amendments passed in 2005 and 2007 that prevented an independent candidate from running for president, decided to take matters into their own hands. They would go into other neighborhoods and convince people to come to the square. &quot;We're going to go out on the streets and start screaming, 'Down with Mubarak,' and asking people to join us. Once we get about 1,000 or 2,000, we will move toward downtown,&quot; Tawfik Gamal told me, as we walked briskly toward the subway.</p>
<p>A little while after we set out, word came that other activists had the same idea, so Tawfik and his friends headed to a different neighborhood. I decided to stick with our original meeting point. As I waited in front of a major Cairo mosque in a wealthy neighborhood, I watched about 100 people walk by.</p>
<p>In front of the mosque, carrying home-made banners and bottles of soda, a small group of friends had congregated. They were the affluent upper-middle-class on the march. One of them is Ahmed El-Diwany. An IT manager at the American University in Cairo, he had moved back into his parents' home to be closer to the protests. He's not sure when Mubarak will fall, but he is sure that he will. &quot;Mubarak is a Taurus, and so he is stubborn. He doesn't like looking weak—and he's a general. Put it all in a blender, and it's a lethal combination,&quot; he tells me, totally serious.</p>
<p>Then a smaller group approaches. A handful of middle-aged male professors who teach at the Cairo University. They are members of the Muslim Brotherhood, an officially banned Islamist group that is the largest organized opposition to the Mubarak regime, but they weren't here on orders from the group's leadership. They are also meeting their friends at the mosque. </p>
<p>The two groups shook hands, and one of the older men gave a young Stanford Ph.D. student his business card. &quot;May God keep you,&quot; they said to one another, then the younger crew hopped into cabs. </p>
<p>I never caught up with the other group of activists. But later in the day, I ran into the first lot sitting on the floor of the square, marveling at the sight of a space so crammed with people that it's hard to move. &quot;We really didn't need to go [to recruit people],&quot; Tawfik admits, shaking his head. &quot;We saw everyone was coming here by themselves, so we came back.&quot; By the time they returned to the square, it was jam-packed.</p>
<p>So instead of having to bring people in, the guys passed time trying to estimate how many people were in the square. &quot;This space is larger than Mecca,&quot; said Abdullah, a doctor. &quot;So if there are 2 million people on the ground floor in Mecca, and it's smaller, there must be more than 2 million people here,&quot; he announced, gleefully. </p>
<p>But as night settles over Cairo, Mubarak is still the president of Egypt. The question on everyone's mind is what happens next. &quot;That's not the point,&quot; Abdullah tells me. &quot;By bringing 2 million people to the square, we sent Mubarak a message. We can bring 2 million. Next week, we'll bring 6 million. There's no Internet, no SMS, no Facebook, but we did it anyway. We built this without any tools. … That means people can do whatever they want. That's the point—and the message.&quot;</p>
<p><em></em></p>
<p><em>Like&nbsp;<strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;on&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/slate"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow us on&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slate"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:46:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/02/we_are_making_our_future.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-02-01T19:46:00ZA dispatch from the massive protest in Cairo's Tahrir Square.News and PoliticsEgyptian protests: A dispatch for Tuesday's massive gathering in Tahrir Square.2283409Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2283409falsefalsefalseEgyptian protesters take part in a demonstration on Feb. 1, 2011, at Cairo's Tahrir Square as massive tides of protesters flooded Cairo for the biggest outpouring of anger yet in their relentless drive to oust President Hosni Mubarak's regimeRumors, Shortages, and Stresshttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/01/rumors_shortages_and_stress.html
<p> CAIRO, Egypt—When I first met Tarek Nowar, an activist leader, he was depressed. Working day and night for five months to convince Egyptians to sign a petition and join him in protesting President Hosni Mubarak's government had not had much effect. Most people he approached on the streets asked him: &quot;What's the use? Nothing will change.&quot; And when we spoke in October 2010, Tarek admitted that even he wasn't sure anything would change. And then everything did.</p>
<p>Today, I met the young architect in downtown Cairo's Tahrir Square, where, for the seventh day in a row, tens of thousands of peaceful protesters have united in demanding an end to Mubarak's nearly 30-year reign. Tarek was beaming. </p>
<p>&quot;I'm overwhelmed. I never really believed we would do this,&quot; says the man who had been agitating for this kind of change for almost a year. &quot;It's making me believe things I never believed before.&quot; Tarek was so excited that he couldn't concentrate as we talked. Every few minutes, one of his friends came by and hugged him. </p>
<p>But the jovial atmosphere of peaceful demonstrators in the main square is a far cry from the mood in other parts of Cairo. The city is tense, bracing for the uncertainty every night of this new chapter of Egypt's history brings.</p>
<p>After the country's police force melted away on Friday and military tanks rolled into the city, rumors floated that armed gangs of thugs—either escaped convicts or regime-sponsored hooligans—would wreak chaos on the city. Neighborhoods formed community-watch groups as young men took to the streets to protect their homes. The sounds of gunfire rippled through the city at night.</p>
<p>My neighborhood was no different. On Saturday night, the repeated sounds of gunshots kept me awake until 4 a.m. Tarek, who has been protesting during the day, has also been keeping watch in his neighborhood at night. &quot;I was scared as hell the first night,&quot; he admitted to me, &quot;I mean, I was carrying a metal stick. I've never carried anything like that. I didn't even know what to do with it.&quot; </p>
<p>Tarek didn't see looters on his patrols, and we joked that the gunfire was probably young people celebrating Mubarak's demise with sound grenades. With the Internet shut off for most of the country and text messages still blocked, it's hard to know what's really going on. </p>
<p>It's only been days since <a href="http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/930658--protesters-stand-their-ground-as-tanks-roll-into-tahrir-square?bn=1">protesters were killed</a> trying to storm the Ministry of the Interior, but somehow it's easy to jest in the jubilant square among thousands of protesters from all walks of life. Yet there are downsides to the protests as well; shops are running short of supplies as distributors are unable to replenish their stock due to the civil unrest. In a pharmacy in central Cairo, they are running out of pills for chronic diseases, and the distributor hasn't said when the next round of medical supplies will arrive. </p>
<p>And a regime struggling for survival has been doing its part to stir up unrest and distrust. The government <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2011/01/201113085252994161.html">revoked Al Jazeera's license</a> and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/30/egypt-aljazeera-idUSLDE70T04520110130">closed the network's offices</a> Sunday. State-run television has repeatedly accused Al Jazeera of portraying Egypt in a poor light. Today, as I headed out to a low-income neighborhood on the outskirts of Cairo to see how Egyptians are making do now that much of the city is shut down, the ugly side of the regime's new survival tactics reared its head. </p>
<p>A frenzied crowd that accused us of being &quot;informants&quot; and &quot;devil agents from Al Jazeera&quot; mobbed a photographer, an Arab journalist, and me. &quot;Didn't you see what they said about Al Jazeera journalists on TV?&quot; one hysterical woman shouted. It wasn't until the uniformed police, who had returned to the streets only this morning, came to our aid that we were able to leave. </p>
<p>After taking us to the remnants of a burnt and looted police station, the police chief calmed the angry crowd. He pretended to arrest us and take us to a booking center to quell their anger, but instead he drove us back into central Cairo and dropped us off. On his first day back on the job, the same people who torched the station had been greeting him warmly, kissing his face, and welcoming him back after the unrest. </p>
<p>Back on the streets of the square, Tarek shook his head when I told him what had happened to me. His activist friends couldn't believe that a crowd had turned violent. There must have been plain-clothes police in the group, they decided, fomenting unrest. </p>
<p>&quot;I thought you were <em>really</em> beaten up,&quot; Tarek said as he inspected my face. I felt a little embarrassed telling him and his friends the story. In the last two years, I had seen many like them go through far worse at the hands of the country's reviled riot police. </p>
<p>I had stood on the sidelines as riot police charged at demonstrators, wielding batons. I had written about their plight, but today they did me one better: The group of young men offered to make sure I was never out on Cairo's streets alone again.</p>
<p><em>Like&nbsp;<strong>Slate&nbsp;</strong>on&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/slate"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow us on&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slate"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>Mon, 31 Jan 2011 22:09:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/01/rumors_shortages_and_stress.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-01-31T22:09:00ZA dispatch from the streets of Cairo.News and PoliticsEgyptian protests: A view from the streets.2283220Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2283220falsefalsefalseProtests in CairoIn Pakistan, the Shooter Is the Herohttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/01/in_pakistan_the_shooter_is_the_hero.html
<p> RAWALPINDI, Pakistan—In the busy commercial market of Rawalpindi, Islamabad's twin city, the narrow alleyways of cloth dyers, jewelers, and shoe peddlers are crammed with shoppers. At a roadside food stall, men sitting at small, rickety tables warm themselves with steaming cups of chai.</p>
<p>Amid the swirling chaos on a frigid Sunday afternoon, everyone at the makeshift tent unanimously agrees: <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/10/AR2011011002576.html">Mumtaz Qadri, the 26-year-old security officer who killed Punjab's governor, Salman Taseer</a>, is a hero.</p>
<p>&quot;It was the perfect action,&quot; says Malik Khan as he flashes me a thumbs up, &quot;any Muslim would do the same thing.&quot; The bundled-up patrons clustered around us nod in agreement. And they aren't the only ones; I've been hearing the same refrain all afternoon as I traversed the bustling market. </p>
<p>It is a<strong></strong>response that has<strong></strong>shocked the country's liberal elite. A member of Taseer's own security team has repeatedly confessed to killing him, yet Qadri has been rewarded with a national outpouring of approval—including garland-throwing and public praise, with fawning YouTube videos and Facebook fan pages appearing within hours of the murder. </p>
<p>The response has been so overwhelming that <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/01/10/pakistan.governor.killed/">authorities furtively moved up Qadri's hearing to Monday</a> to pre-empt more gatherings of adoring crowds. (It was originally scheduled for Tuesday.) This weekend in Karachi, 50,000 people came out in support of the blasphemy law Qadri was supposedly defending when he shot Taseer more than 20 times in the back.</p>
<p>Taseer's assassination has illuminated the stark divide between liberals and religious extremists in Pakistan, and it has demonstrated who is winning. The response from politicians and the general public has shown the power religious extremists wield over the public discourse in this devout Muslim country of approximately 170 million. Almost everyone I speak to here agrees that extremism and polarization are on the rise.</p>
<p>Taseer, the appointed governor of Pakistan's largest and richest province, made headlines prior to his Jan. 4 assassination when he <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/world/asia/23pstan.html">took up the case of Asia Bibi</a>, a Christian woman sitting on death row after being convicted of blasphemy. He called a law that sentences anyone who insults Islam to death a &quot;black law.&quot; </p>
<p>The result was that the outspoken liberal politician and personal friend of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was shot outside an upscale market in Islamabad. In the days since his murder, a dwindling group of supporters have held a daily vigil a mere 10 feet away from the green tarp that covers the spot where he last stood. &quot;Where are moderate Muslims? Right here,&quot; reads a handwritten placard,<strong></strong>tellingly written in English rather than Urdu, the country's national language. </p>
<p>Pakistan's small liberal elite has gathered to light candles in memory of their hero. &quot;Among people who are sort of progressive and liberal in this country, this really hit home,&quot; Reehana Reza told me. Her face is etched with worry as she discusses the ramifications of Taseer's murder. &quot;People feel discussion space is disappearing,&quot; she said. &quot;He's a politician—if he can't say it, who can?&quot; she says, referring to any criticism of the blasphemy law.</p>
<p>Reza thinks the blame partially belongs to people like her, those lucky enough to be born into elite circles in a country where about 40 percent of the population lives below the global poverty line and the sharp divide between rich and poor is one of the main issues bedeviling the country. &quot;The alternate side can at least provide God,&quot; she muses about the religious establishment. &quot;They provide God, and we provide nothing.&quot; </p>
<p>At first, politicians were hesitant to condemn the attacks, but when I met Marvi Memon, a national assembly member from the opposition party PML-Q in her office across from the parliament, the diminutive firecracker had just put forward a motion signed by 21 members condemning Taseer's murder—something that had yet to be done a week after the assassination. Think how different this is from the outpouring of condemnation from both sides of the political aisle in the United States following the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.</p>
<p>The problem according to many here, including Memon, is not Pakistan's piety, but the power of the minority of religious extremists—and their control over politicians.</p>
<p>&quot;I see extremist elements taking control of the thought process of common Pakistanis, and that is what's dangerous. Politicians have also been told by religious elements to take the same position as them. So they are being coerced and threatened,&quot; she says about the blasphemy law. And, Memon admits,<strong></strong>the threats are working. </p>
<p>&quot;Anyone who is not a religious cleric is extremely worried about taking positions on religion and gets cornered very easily by the religious clerics. That needs to be stopped now, before it's too late,&quot; she told me, gesturing passionately during our interview. </p>
<p>But that time may have already passed. In an indication of the sensitivity of the debate here, Memon's solution to the ongoing crisis over the misuse of the blasphemy law is to propose an entirely separate law to regulate how the blasphemy law can be used. </p>
<p>In a sign of how deeply rooted the submission to the religious establishment is, Memon doesn't want to dictate what the new law will say. &quot;We want the religious clerics to get back to us on this, because we want them to take ownership on this,&quot; she says when I ask why her co-signers won't draft the new law themselves.</p>
<p>Following the murder, 500 Pakistani religious scholars issued a statement saying that anyone who expressed grief over Taseer's death could suffer the same fate. </p>
<p>For their part, Pakistan's religious parties have also been reticent to assign complete blame to Qadri. In his reception area, Khurshid Ahmad, the vice president of Jamaat-e-Islami, does not &quot;condone&quot; Taseer's murder, but he is ready to acknowledge that the governor might have had it coming.</p>
<p>&quot;It is an action taken in provocation&quot; he says. &quot;The governor has violated the law of the country and had provoked the feelings of the people and went beyond his legal authority,&quot; he told me. </p>
<p>According to Ahmad, Taseer broke the blasphemy law by questioning it and subverted the legal system by championing Bibi's cause. &quot;To take the law into one<strong>'</strong>s own hands is wrong both for the governor and for the policeman or for anyone else,&quot; drawing equivalence between the assassin's and the victim's actions. </p>
<p>The murder, he said, could have been avoided if Taseer had been relieved of his post for his efforts to defend Bibi. </p>
<p>But human rights activists in Pakistan have no patience for the supposed outrage over Taseer's criticism of the blasphemy law. Marvi Sirmed, a blogger and activist, is vitriolic in her condemnation of Pakistani society after the murder. &quot;It's not only one person, it's a whole mind-set, a mind-set that puts garlands around his neck, the mind-set that offers him flowers, the mind-set that makes him a hero,&quot;<strong></strong>she tells me. </p>
<p>Sirmed's voice drops as she talks about the governor and her country's fate. She repeatedly apologizes for lapsing into profanities. Ultimately, she surmises, whichever figure Pakistanis choose to coalescence around will speak volumes about the country's growing divide. &quot;It's very important for us to know: Who is our hero? Salman Taseer—who stood for the rights of human beings—or the person who madly killed him?&quot;</p>
<p>But in Rawalpindi's market, where open gutters and cracked pavements seem like an entirely different country compared with the plush offices of Islamabad's politicians and elite, the decision seems to have already been made. </p>
<p>&quot;Nowadays, he's perfectly heroic,&quot; says Imran Shiekh, the owner of a small jewelry store tucked away in the market's depths. &quot;Qadri did the right thing, and he did it well. Ninety-nine percent of Pakistanis would agree.&quot; </p>
<p>And for Pakistan's liberals, therein lies the problem. </p>
<p><em>Like&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Slate"><em>Slate&nbsp;on Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Slate"><em>Slate&nbsp;</em></a><em>and the&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slateforeign"><em>Slate&nbsp;Foreign Desk</em></a><em>&nbsp;on Twitter.</em></p>Mon, 10 Jan 2011 22:29:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2011/01/in_pakistan_the_shooter_is_the_hero.htmlSarah A. Topol2011-01-10T22:29:00ZThe depressing public reaction to the assassination of Pakistani politician Salman Taseer.News and PoliticsMumtaz Qadri shot Salman Taseer 28 times; in Pakistan, he's a hero.2280700Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2280700falsefalsefalsePakistanis&nbsp;mourn&nbsp;Salman TaseerEgypt's Command Economyhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2010/12/egypts_command_economy.html
<p> CAIRO—The lavish headquarters of Egypt's Ministry of Military Production is a far cry from the rundown buildings that surround it in central Cairo. From the golden handrails of the sweeping central staircase to the ministry's fancy custom-made drink coasters—the place is awash with cash.</p>
<p>Minister Sayed Meshal, a former general<strong>,</strong> is eager to tell me that the ministry can afford its gaudy accoutrements—after all, it turns a tidy profit. He says the ministry's revenues from the private sector are about 2 billion Egyptian pounds a year ($345 million). It employs 40,000 civilians, who assemble water-treatment stations for the Ministry of Housing, cables for the Ministry of Electricity, laptops for the Ministry of Education, and armaments for the Ministry of Interior's vehicles. Meanwhile,<strong></strong>other ministry employees produce washing machines, refrigerators, televisions, and metal sheeting for construction projects.&nbsp; </p>
<p>While we're discussing metal sheeting, Meshal adamantly denies that the government subsidizes any of his products. But in the case of these sheets, the ministry has a monopoly; it is the only place in Egypt producing the alloy in this size. &quot;You're a clever lady,&quot; exclaims Meshal with a smile and shake of his head when I point this out to him. He chuckles that I'm getting the best of him. </p>
<p>I smile back. His small admission feels like a huge victory. </p>
<p>Almost everything related to the Egyptian military is a black box. The number of people serving, their salaries, the military's land holdings, its budget—none of that information is in the public record. Joshua Stacher, a political science professor at Kent State University who studies the Egyptian military, estimates that the military controls somewhere from 33 percent to 45 percent of the Egyptian economy, but there's no way to know for sure. </p>
<p>The military has defined Egypt's political path since Gamal Abdel Nasser overthrew the monarchy in 1952. And with President Hosni Mubarak 82 and ailing, the key question is whether the military will weigh in on his successor. Most observers think the president wants his banker-turned-politician son Gamal to take over, but can the all-powerful army accept a civilian leader for the first time in more than 50 years? </p>
<p>A Dec. 14 WikiLeaks cable dump exposed something that I had spent months chasing: The civilian regime has tried to neutralize the military's kingmaker powers by establishing it as a major stakeholder in the status quo. In a period of transition, the Egyptian military will be more concerned about whether Egypt's next president will protect its vast economic holdings rather than if he wears a uniform. </p>
<p>&quot;The military helps to ensure regime stability and operates a large network of businesses, as it becomes a 'quasi-commercial' enterprise itself,&quot; wrote U.S. Ambassador Margaret Scobey in a <a href="http://213.251.145.96/cable/2008/09/08CAIRO2091.html">September 2008 cable</a>. &quot;The regime, aware of the critical role the MOD [Ministry of Defense] can play in presidential succession, may well be trying to co-opt the military through patronage into accepting Gamal's path to the presidency,&quot; she speculated. </p>
<p>The Egyptian military manufactures everything from bottled water, olive oil, pipes, electric cables, and heaters to roads through different military-controlled enterprises. It runs hotels and construction companies and owns large plots of land. </p>
<p>The Egyptian military has &quot;an enormous vested interest in the way things run in Egypt, and you could, I think, be sure that they'll try to protect those interests,&quot; a Western diplomat in Cairo told me. &quot;There's a certain conventional wisdom [that] therefore the next president has to come from the military. I don't know that that's true. It's the interest that they'll be interested in protecting.&quot; </p>
<p>But reporting on the military is difficult. No one wants to talk about the subject, and people who are willing to talk don't want their names used. If civilians are worried, Egyptian journalists are petrified. &quot;There is Law 313, [passed in] the year 1956, and it bans you from writing about the army,&quot; Hesham Kassem, an independent publisher, told me. &quot;It's the taboo of journalism.&quot; </p>
<p>&quot;If the minister of defense was to go on CNN and say, 'We have changed the color of our uniform,' and then you do a story about that, you could be [prosecuted.] You say, 'Well, he said it on CNN,' and they say, 'Yes we know, but you cannot write without a permit,' &quot; Kassem explained. </p>
<p>Consequently, very little is known about the military's expansion into the private sector. The transition occurred after the 1979 Camp David Accords, when army factories under the control of the National Service Products Organization shifted some of its production from armaments to consumer goods. The NSPO also happens to have been Minister Meshal's last posting. </p>
<p>The NSPO was impossible to reach, but Meshal explained that the NSPO's factories are staffed entirely by active military personnel, and<strong>, </strong>like his ministry, they produce goods, including olive oil and bottled water, for both the armed services and the civilian market. Safi, the famous Egyptian<strong></strong>bottled water brand produced by the NSPO, is named after Meshal's daughter, he told me gleefully, pointing to a bottle on his desk. </p>
<p>But the Egyptian military has not only infiltrated the commercial market, it also dominates top posts in the civil service. Twenty-one of Egypt's 29 provincial<strong></strong>governors are former members of the military and security services, as are the heads of institutions such as the Suez Canal Authority and several government ministries. </p>
<p>Retired military officers are also seen throughout the middle-management levels of private sector companies &quot;It's a sort of jobs program,&quot; says Kent State's Stacher. &quot;They tend to offer them higher salaries as a sort of golden parachute to get them out of the military and into the economy.&quot; </p>
<p>An ex-airline industry employee told me that at EgyptAir, the country's national carrier, &quot;a lot of the middle management is becoming ex-military, to the extent that the original employees are becoming depressed. They feel this organization is not theirs anymore. Imagine you are killing yourself in a position for years, and a military man arrives. What would you feel?&quot; </p>
<p>For a country still struggling to remove the shackles of an old command economy, the price of keeping the military out of politics may be an economic one. The September 2008 cable released on Tuesday reports State Department sources claiming Egypt's defense minister can &quot;put a hold on any contract for 'security concerns.' &quot; </p>
<p>As Scobey argued in the same cable, the military and the market do not mix: &quot;We see the military's role in the economy as a force that generally stifles free market reform by increasing direct government involvement in the markets,&quot; she wrote.</p>
<p>So, while post-Mubarak Egypt may end up being run by a civilian, it's likely that a good chunk of the economy will still belong to the generals. </p>
<p><em></em></p>
<p><em>Like&nbsp;</em><strong><em>Slate&nbsp;</em></strong><em>on&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/slate"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow us on&nbsp;</em><em> <a href="http://twitter.com/SLATE"><em>Twitter</em></a></em><em>.</em></p>Wed, 15 Dec 2010 22:33:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2010/12/egypts_command_economy.htmlSarah A. Topol2010-12-15T22:33:00ZA WikiLeaks cable shows how the regime has bought off the military.News and PoliticsA WikiLeaks cable shows how Egypt's regime has bought off the military.2278044Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2278044falsefalsefalseEgyptian President Hosni MubarakStill Swimming With Sharkshttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2010/12/still_swimming_with_sharks.html
<p> SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt—A cluster of tourists gesture excitedly at the teal-blue waters of the exclusive Hyatt Regency beach in this Red Sea resort. Word is, there's a shark in the water. No, wait, not just one. &quot;There are two!&quot; they call out excitedly, pointing cameras.</p>
<p>In front of them, shadows dance under the surf. The crowd's anxiety builds as they realize they may be looking at the animals responsible for a bizarre string of attacks that maimed four tourists and killed one in the span of six days.</p>
<p>George Burgess, an American shark expert invited by the Egyptian government to help investigate the attacks, happens to be staying at the Hyatt. He<em></em>rushes out in a small patrol boat, but there's nothing there. &quot;I saw some beautiful reefs, but no sharks,&quot; he told me afterwards.</p>
<p>This was not the first false alarm in a city now besieged by rumors and wild speculation. &quot;There are four sharks, and they've all been injected with steroids by the Israelis,&quot; says Mohab, who touts for a tour company on a beachside boulevard. Mohab is convinced the attacks are a Zionist plot against the heart of Egypt's $11 billion tourism industry. The government, too, has lent credence to this idea: A week ago, one official suggested that Mossad might have <a href="http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/12/06/egypts_shark_week_mossad_to_blame">attached GPS to a shark</a> and programmed it to strike Egyptian waters. </p>
<p>Other theories are perhaps more mundane: <a></a> It's not four killer sharks, but 400; they weren't turned on to human flesh in Egypt, but made the trek from the coast of Somalia; an entire generation of young sharks have turned on the human divers who feed them underwater so as to get a closer look; and so forth. <a href="http://www.slate.com#Correct">*</a> &nbsp;All these stories reveal one piece of incontrovertible data: No one, including the Egyptian government, has any idea what's going on. </p>
<p>Already reeling from the spectacle of contested parliamentary elections two weeks ago, Cairo now faces another international PR battle and administrative flop. Official efforts to deal with the shark attacks have produced little more than a comedy of errors and a tragic death. And among the tourists and tourism operators along the coast here, trust in the authorities is nonexistent. </p>
<p>The shark attacks began two weeks ago, when the first tourists were <a href="http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2010/12/01/general-ml-egypt-shark-attack_8173467.html?boxes=Homepagebusinessnews">mauled</a>. The government responded by closing the beaches for 72 hours, until a pair of sharks that were suspected of being maneaters had been caught, paraded around the docks and slaughtered. Then, the next day, <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g8tqLrPPkwA0h7U5EV-I57UQ2lQA?docId=96d5c7fab8024e88bb57cdb4ea6d8462">a 70-year-old German woman was killed</a> by another shark on the Regency's beachfront, and the government once again shut down the beaches.</p>
<p>This time, the Egyptians called in experts from overseas. Only a few weeks earlier, the government had <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/world/africa/19egypt.html">rebuffed</a> international elections monitors who might have supported its claims that the highly-suspect parliamentary elections were &quot;free and fair.&quot; Lesson learned, Egypt was now ready to make a public display of its reliance on outsiders like George Burgess to do the job. &quot;Additional shark experts have been contacted to form a strong team to advise on the best solution on how to handle this situation,&quot; announced a <a href="http://www.cdws.travel/chamber-news.aspx?NewsId=45">press release</a> from the Egyptian Chamber for Diving and Underwater Sports, after the German woman's death.</p>
<p>But the locals seem no more inclined than before to trust the government response. &quot;The government made a big mistake, opening the beaches. A big mistake,&quot; said one employee of the Hyatt who did not want to be named because he was under orders not to speak to the media.</p>
<p>According to Burgess, the two sharks slain by the Egyptian authorities were clearly innocent of any crimes against humanity. Necropsies showed no signs of human remains, yet the government announced that one of the pair was the killer. &quot;They care about money,&quot; explained the Hyatt worker. &quot;They should have closed [the beach] for 10 days, 15 days, a month, to make sure the problem is solved.&quot; </p>
<p>Hyatt staffers are not the only ones who say they have been asked not to talk to the press. Diving center managers told me they had been requested not to speak to journalists, while local officials and experts all referred me to the government spokesman. When I asked the spokesman for permission to speak to the Egyptian side of the research team, my request was denied. </p>
<p>So far, no one, including the experts, has a convincing explanation for the sudden change in shark behavior. The working (and credible) theories start with overfishing of tuna, which may have limited food sources out to sea and encouraged the sharks to forage closer to the resorts. Or maybe the sharks were drawn to a trail of sheep carcasses dumped over the side of cargo ships bound for Jordan, their appetites whetted for mammal flesh.</p>
<p>Most likely, Burgess suggests, it's a combination of these factors and others. According to his analysis, at least two different sharks of different species have been involved in the attacks. That suggests we're not dealing with &quot;a crazy shark, the killer that stands on the roof and shoots at anybody who walks by,&quot; he says. Instead, a series of changes in the ecosystem might have made nearby sharks more inclined to bite people. </p>
<p>If few people know what led the sharks to go on a rampage, fewer understand what the Egyptian government is doing to stop the attacks. I hear about shark nets being deployed to keep the killers from the shores, mannequins being dropped into the water to bait them from the depths, and ultrasound rays being used to zap them underwater. According to the deputy governor of South Sinai, Ahmed Saleh al-Idkawi, eight members of the Marine Biology Institute are working on the case, although he could not elaborate how. Five National Parks boats are being used, but he could not explain where. And people from the environmental department of the South Sinai were involved, but he could not say in what capacity.</p>
<p>&quot;I'm only a spokesman, not a scientist,&quot; Al-Idkawi said. He did tell me the Egyptian investigators were studying photographs and videos of the maneating sharks taken by divers, snorkelers and beach revelers before, during and after each attack. And that they were &quot;studying biologically what's really happening in the water right now.&quot;</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the Egyptians working the main drag at Namaa Bay and elsewhere around Sharm worry their government's apparent ineptitude will cost them tourist dollars—and that its haphazard information campaign hasn't helped assuage the crisis, either. Recent news suggests the authorities are still inclined to act now and think later: On Sunday night, the government announced it would <a href="http://af.reuters.com/article/topNews/idAFJOE6BC00920101213">reopen the beaches in Sharm</a> without having any clear sense of why the sharks attacked or how to prevent the same thing from happening again. There will be watchtowers and patrol boats around designated swimming areas, but little else in the way of new safety measures.</p>
<p>When Leanne Webb arrived here from the United Kingdom with her boyfriend, she was told by her tour operator swimming was not allowed because of a recent string of attacks; then it was safe, and then suddenly it wasn't. &quot;We've heard so many different stories, there's no way I'm going in at all. No one knows what's going on, we had to buy the English newspaper just to find out,&quot; Webb says as we stand with our toes in the surf, as far as either of us apparently wants to go.</p>
<p><em><strong>Correction, <a></a> Dec. 14, 2010:</strong></em> The article originally and&nbsp;<em><em><em><em>incorrectly said the sharks &quot;made the trek [to Egypt] from Africa,&quot; even though Egypt is part of Africa. (<a href="http://www.slate.com#Return">Return</a> to the corrected sentence.)</em></em></em></em></p>
<p>Like&nbsp;<strong>Slate</strong>&nbsp;on&nbsp; <a href="http://www.facebook.com/slate">Facebook</a>. Follow us on&nbsp; <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slate">Twitter</a>.</p>Tue, 14 Dec 2010 02:03:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2010/12/still_swimming_with_sharks.htmlSarah A. Topol2010-12-14T02:03:00ZDeadly maulings at an Egyptian resort lead to a clumsy government response.News and PoliticsEgyptian shark attacks: The government makes a clumsy response.2277760Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2277760falsefalsefalseA white tip shark in Egypt&quot;Gaza Is Not Darfur!&quot;http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2010/08/gaza_is_not_darfur.html
<p> <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2262836"></a> <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2262836"></a></p>
<p> <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2262836"></a> GAZA CITY—Aid officials in Gaza all recite the same statistics: &quot;44 percent unemployment, 80 percent food-aid dependent, and 60 percent living on less than $2 a day.&quot; It sounds like a script they've grown tired of delivering to passing journalists. After multiple rounds of similar briefings, I'm staring at Kamla Joudah's parlor in Nuseirat refugee camp, in the middle of the Gaza Strip. The warm beige tones of the furniture reflect the heat, and the walls gleam. The frequently cut power is on today, so the fan whirls. Tea and coffee are brought out on a small tray. Kamla catches me appraising her home. &quot;What are you looking at?&quot; she asks, with some pique.</p>
<p>&quot;Your house,&quot; I reply, &quot;It's very nice.&quot; </p>
<p>She looks at me quizzically, &quot;This is not Darfur,&quot; she snaps. The family members in the room burst out laughing as I blush.</p>
<p>The oft-recited statistics paint a bleak picture of life in the territory. But Gaza is a lot more complicated than the numbers suggest. </p>
<p>Comments like Kamla's are common here; everyone I speak to insists the coastal enclave is nothing like Somalia, Bangladesh, or the Democratic Republic of Congo. And people are indignant that I suggested it might be in the same league as those places. </p>
<p>When <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,489185,00.html">Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007</a>, an Israeli-led, Egyptian-enforced blockade severely limited the flow of goods and people in and out of the territory. As a result, Gaza's economy crumbled. </p>
<p>Two months ago, Israel eased its restrictions on consumer goods entering the strip after its deadly raid on the Turkish flotilla. Now, Gaza's markets overflow with Israeli food. Although middle-class consumers are happy to see the Israeli products, the easing of restrictions on foodstuffs has done little to solve the basic problems facing the territory. </p>
<p>&quot;There is food in Gaza. It's not a humanitarian crisis. There is no hunger, there is no starvation, but there is a crisis of another nature,&quot; says Mahmoud Daher, a World Health Organization official in Gaza, who was expressing his personal views, not those of his organization. </p>
<p>As Daher explains, the blockade has dramatically altered the standard of living for Palestinians in the territory. In three years, he assesses, Gazans have lost 20 years of economic development. And in that decline lies the root of the crisis in Gaza as he sees it. </p>
<p>&quot;Inability to access quality care is a crisis, inability for people to produce and have access to jobs is a crisis, inability of people to get the quality of education that they are used to is a crisis, and above all [it is] a crisis of dignity—a crisis of humanity,&quot; Daher tells me.</p>
<p>Gaza's infrastructure problems are plentiful. The sewage system is busted, pumping 100 million liters of half-processed waste into the Mediterranean daily, according to a U.N. spokesman. Drinking water is not properly desalinized. The continued ban on the importation of raw materials has stymied Gaza's construction and industrial sector, contributing to unemployment. (Israel believes Hamas will use the materials to build bunkers from which to attack it.) Hospital equipment is outdated. Limits on exports have shut down large parts of the agricultural sector. The list goes on. <br />&nbsp;<br />But the blockade has had a different, unseen impact. After three years, the restrictions haven't only affected the economy; they have also had a profound impact on the population's psychology. The new commercial opening has done little to ease that strain.</p>
<p>Kamla's neighbor in the refugee camp, Um Mahmoud, 42, lives just down the alley with her husband, their three children, and her father-in-law. The family receives basic food aid from the United Nations every three months. They don't have problems eating, she explains. The problem is everything else. </p>
<p>They cannot fix the holes in their roof and can barely afford medication for her husband and his ailing father. They seek charity from friends and family&nbsp;while her husband works sporadically as a taxi driver. <br />&nbsp;<br />&quot;Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one with all these problems,&quot; she says sitting in Kamla's parlor. &quot;My husband doesn't know what to do. When he's angry, he explodes his problems in my face. … He shouts. Sometimes he gets angry and beats me,&quot; she admits.<br />&nbsp;<br />When I ask how she handles the stress, she replies simply, &quot;I beat my children. ... I can't say anything different. It feels like it's been this way forever.&quot; She tells me she's never told this to anyone before, but everyone in the room already knows. The walls of the camp's houses are thin. </p>
<p>Mahmoud, her 9-year-old son, is rambunctious. &quot;He's nervous all the time. He fights everybody and shouts all the time. He's not like other children,&quot; she says. &quot;He's aggressive.&quot; Everyone nods in agreement.<br />&nbsp;<br />Um Mahmoud and her family are not alone. Officials from the Gaza Community Mental Health Program have noted a rising incidence of domestic violence across the strip. &quot;To be a man, to be a person dependent on humanitarian aid and asking for basic needs … it's not easy for them,&quot; says Hasan Shaban Zeyada, a psychologist at the GCMHP.<br />&nbsp;<br />Zeyada says husbands take out their anxieties on the family, and wives like Um Mahmoud in turn beat their children. &quot;It's a closed circle of violence: the father, the mother, the children. And the children will react in a violent way toward their friends in the neighborhood, in the school.&quot; </p>
<p>The feeling of despondency is not limited to the residents of the refugee camps. It pervades almost every conversation I have in Gaza.</p>
<p>I'm trying to hail a shared taxi, unmarked cars that drive around the city picking up passengers, in an upscale neighborhood in Gaza City when a vehicle pulls over. I open the back door. &quot;I'm not a taxi,&quot; comes a shout in English from the driver's seat. I take stock of the gleaming car and clamber into the front passenger seat. <br />&nbsp;<br />The driver is young. He says he is bored and is giving me a ride for the hell of it. &quot;There are no jobs here,&quot; he tells me. He graduated with a degree in business administration a year ago, but he remains unemployed. &quot;I just want to leave, but I can't,&quot; he trails off. <br />&nbsp;<br />&quot;In Gaza, if you have $1 million or you have $1, it is the same, you are exposed to the same bad things. … You are not allowed to travel, to get proper treatment,&quot; says Adnan Abu Hasna, Gaza's U.N. Relief and Works Agency spokesman. </p>
<p>Matthew Olsen, a part-time Gaza resident and the director of Explore Corps, a U.S.-based community development NGO, explains it another way: &quot;The fact that it's closed changes the whole mindset of the place. Visiting Gaza is like visiting someone in prison in a way. Their life might not be that bad, they're not starving to death, or anything like that, but the knowledge that they can't leave … it really affects them.&quot; </p>
<p>Gaza has no functional airport, and movement through both the Israeli and Egyptian borders is severely restricted. <a></a> Still, one of Gaza City's main thoroughfares boasts a Royal Jordanian Airlines <a href="http://www.slate.com#correction">*</a> office. Sitting at the front desk, Hesham, who did not want to give his last name, says the office has been open every day of the siege. His grandfather opened it in 1965. &quot;The people must have faith in our business,&quot; he says. &quot;What would they think if we closed?&quot;</p>
<p>But these days, they have little to offer. The office, which is an authorized representative of the airline, sells tickets on flights from Cairo to Jordan and from Jordan onward to anywhere the kingdom's carrier flies. </p>
<p>Gazans who purchase a ticket in the strip must first cross into Egypt and then make their way to the Cairo airport from the territory's border, a six-hour drive. As Hesham explains, if Gazans do not have a visa to travel within Egypt, but they have purchased a ticket from Cairo to Amman, they are herded onto a bus from the Rafah border crossing straight to the Cairo airport. Hustled from the bus to a crowded room in the terminal, they wait there for their onward travel.<br /><br />Since Egypt eased its restrictions on civilian movement through its border crossing in early June, Hesham estimates business has improved 10 percent. &quot;It's not a lot,&quot; he notes, &quot;but it's better than zero.&quot;</p>
<p><em><strong>Correction, <a></a> Aug. 6, 2010:</strong> This story originally misidentified Royal Jordanian Airlines as &quot;Jordanian Airways.&quot; (<a href="http://www.slate.com#return">Return</a> to the corrected sentence.)</em><br /><br /><em>Like </em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/Slate"><em><strong>Slate</strong> on Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow </em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/Slate"><em><strong>Slate</strong></em></a><em>and the </em> <a href="http://www.twitter.com/slateforeign"><em><strong>Slate </strong>Foreign Desk</em></a><em> on Twitter.</em></p>Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:04:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2010/08/gaza_is_not_darfur.htmlSarah A. Topol2010-08-05T14:04:00ZHow the blockade affects Gazans.News and PoliticsHow the blockade affects Gazans.2262805Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2262805falsefalsefalseGaza's Summer Camp Warhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2010/07/gazas_summer_camp_war.html
<p> <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2261905"></a> <a href="http://www.slate.com/id/2261905"></a> GAZA CITY—This summer in Gaza, a new war is raging: the battle of the children's day camps. Forty-five percent of the 1.5 million people in Gaza are under the age of 16, and few organizations can resist the opportunity to mold 675,000 young minds.</p>
<p>Each faction proudly displays its colors. Hamas, the Islamist group that seized control of the territory in 2007, hands out green caps to kids that attend its sessions; the U.N. Relief and Works Agency dispenses blue-and-white hats; and girls at the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs camps sport white headscarves. </p>
<p>The UNRWA Summer Games camps are by far the best-funded and most heavily attended, catering to more than 250,000 children. But UNRWA has paid a price for its success. Twice in the last month and a half, masked men have attacked the international-aid agency's beach campsites. Mobs burned camps, slashed trampolines and water slides, and left threatening notes with tied-up security guards. </p>
<p>&quot;This is one of the most successful seasons for UNRWA Summer Games; maybe that's what angered others and led them to attack,&quot; says Adnan Abu Hasna, Gaza's UNRWA spokesman. Crime is rare in Gaza, where an armed Hamas policeman patrols almost every corner. </p>
<p>The rhetoric used against the United Nations by rival camp organizers is subtle. &quot;The U.N. camps are concentrating only on entertainment. Children go to the beach and play and sing and dance. Ministry camps concentrate on entertainment <em>and</em> memorizing the Quran, which is part of our culture,&quot; says Kefh El Ramly, director of the girl's programming at the Ministry of Endowment and Religious Affairs, which is a branch of the Hamas-controlled government. </p>
<p>The ministry runs mosque-based camps for 10,000 children for five hours a day, six days a week. &quot;We teach children to read the Quran, because it is our holy book. We learn a lot from it—manners, how to be good, how to deal with people, how to deal with God, how to deal with our neighbors. It is full of principles and good manners,&quot; says El Ramly, who makes no secret of the ministry's desire to Islamize young minds. </p>
<p>Hamas is also blunt about its programming—teaching children to sympathize with the group's ideology. &quot;Major movement leaders come and meet the children. Children here feel they're closer to the movement [afterward], because they feel that someone cares about them,&quot; Kamal El Gazi, eastern Gaza Hamas camp organizer, told me. </p>
<p>El Gazi estimates that 50,000 children attend Hamas camps. &quot;We try to grow the seeds of nationalism and Islam in the heart of these children. There are so many activities here related to our culture, not brought in from outside,&quot; he says. </p>
<p>The verbal attacks on UNRWA began a few months ago. Although UNRWA normally works solely with refugees, last year they opened up camp attendance to others. As a result, &quot;Hamas thought … that would leave them with no one,&quot; says Mkhaimar Abusada, assistant professor of political science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City. &quot;So this year Hamas started a war of incitement against UNRWA.&quot; </p>
<p>As Abusada describes it, leaflets were distributed in mosques across the strip in May and June, claiming UNRWA camps were not serving the &quot;interests&quot; of the Palestinians. Posters touting Hamas' &quot;purposeful&quot; summer camps encouraged parents to enroll their children in Hamas and Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs camps. </p>
<p>In some cases, it worked. At one Hamas campsite in Gaza City, boys in green baseball caps and Hamas T-shirts spend their days playing sports and taking classes in subjects like drawing, religion, and culture from Hamas volunteers. </p>
<p>&quot;They can call it summer camps, but in reality this is just part of Islamic socialization. This is just recruiting and political socialization to join Hamas,&quot; says Abusada. &quot;They are recruiting these kids&nbsp;to join the al-Qassam Brigades [Hamas' military wing]. Whenever there is a fight with Israel or there is a new round of violence with Israel, most of the boys will be recruited to fight as suicide bombers or at least to join the Palestinian resistance.&quot; </p>
<p>Sixteen-year-old Ahmed Abul Kass gave his Hamas camp a glowing review: &quot;They take us on many trips, and I have a good time playing with the other kids here. Also, I learn about the Al-Aqsa mosque and prisoners in Israel,&quot; he says in one breath, flushed from participating in a sack race. When asked to describe what he learned about Al-Aqsa (known by Jews as the Temple Mount), Ahmed considers his answer. &quot;I learned that Israelis are digging under it, and it might fall down, and no one cares about it,&quot; he says. </p>
<p>In the Hamas camp's art class, boys are asked to draw whatever comes to mind. Most often, volunteer art teacher Ibrahim Sukar says, the kids draw the Al-Aqsa mosque, violent scenes from Israel's 22-day 2009 offensive, or the Turkish flotilla that tried to break Israel's three-year blockade on Gaza in May. Sure enough, of the 15 boys in the room, 12 have put a Palestinian flag somewhere in their picture. Many have drawn the al-Aqsa mosque, and a few have sketched scenes of violence. Only one boy has produced a pastoral scene of a house in a field. </p>
<p>The children who attend the Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs camps spend most of their time on the Quran. Once a week, children are taken on field trips, but otherwise they are occupied with religious matters. </p>
<p>All the groups—UNRWA, Hamas, and the ministry—segregate their campers. At every campsite, girls and boys attend different sessions with same-gender counselors.</p>
<p>In a ministry-run camp on the second floor of a mosque, about 90 girls sit in small groups of 10 to 15, taking turns reading from the Quran. It's quiet in the room—the ceiling fans whirl, pages shuffle, and soft voices recite the holy words.</p>
<p>The young women here are self-assured and disciplined, with no teenage awkwardness or giggling. Girls shout out their responses to questions. &quot;I come here so I can be close to God. This is the way I show him I love him, by coming here,&quot; explains 15-year-old Alah Nasser. &quot;The U.N. summer camps are empty,&quot; says Alah. &quot;OK, they go for entertainment, but no good comes from it in the next life. Here, we learn the Quran and we hope to end up in paradise.&quot; She gestures forcefully as she speaks.</p>
<p>The administrators of the U.N. camps agree with Alah's assessment. Maher El-Sayes, a camp manager, explains: &quot;The UNRWA wants kids to play and have fun, there's no other motive. Other factions try to make kids support them in the future. UNRWA was apolitical from the beginning and has nothing to do with the interior conflicts. That's why many people send their children here.&quot;</p>
<p>UNRWA camper Mahmoud Salim, 14, is busy at work at a craft table. He is building a kite. &quot;I'm so happy here, everything is so great,&quot; he says, anxious to return to his task. He doesn't quite get the problem other camps have with his summer of fun. </p>
<p>&quot;They're different than us.&quot; Mahmoud says. He pauses to consider the differences when prompted. &quot;We swim in a pool, but they swim in another place,&quot; he decides, distractedly eying his kite. </p>
<p><em>Like&nbsp;<strong>Slate&nbsp;</strong>on&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://www.facebook.com/slate"><em>Facebook</em></a><em>. Follow us on&nbsp;</em> <a href="http://http/www.twitter.com/slate"><em>Twitter</em></a><em>.</em></p>Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:55:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2010/07/gazas_summer_camp_war.htmlSarah A. Topol2010-07-27T10:55:00ZKids in the Gaza Strip can spend their summers swimming, studying the Quran, or learning about Palestinian prisoners.News and PoliticsHamas, ministry of religious affairs, or United Nations? Summer camp wars in the Gaza Strip.2261596Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2261596falsefalsefalseBacklash to the Kingmakerhttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2009/03/backlash_to_the_kingmaker.html
<p> TEL AVIV, Israel—In Israel, calling an immigrant from the former Soviet Union &quot;Russian&quot; is an insult; the preferred term is <em>repatriate</em>, someone who has returned home. <em>Russian</em> refers to ethnic Russians, and in Russia, Jews were constantly reminded that they were not Russian. Having experienced institutionalized anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union, the 1.2 million Soviet immigrants who flooded Israel in the 1990s were shocked when they were accused of not being Jewish enough by the local population. Whenever I am in Israel, I am constantly corrected by the repatriates themselves when I use the term &quot;Russian immigrant.&quot;</p>
<p>Over the last 20 years, the repatriates have integrated into Israeli society; their children serve in the army, speak fluent Hebrew, and watch <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HaAh_Hagadol_VIP"><em>Big Brother VIP</em></a>. Repatriates assure me that society has begun to accept the quirks of Russian immigrant culture—drinking vodka on a cold day, eating Russian food, tuning in to Russian-language television and radio—but repatriate <a href="http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3684987,00.html">Avigdor Lieberman's recent emergence as the kingmaker of Israeli politics</a> comes with a cost. Although it signifies Russian political empowerment in mainstream Israeli politics, it has resurfaced some old Russian stereotypes. </p>
<p>Peter Mastovoy, an internationally acclaimed documentary director, will be honored with the Yuri Shtern Medal by the Ministry of Absorption for his contribution to Israeli culture and society on March 29. Over a lunch of borsht, <em>seloydka</em> (pickled herring), Russian beet and potato salads, hummus, and pita, he tried to explain the initial attitude toward the enormous wave of Russian immigrants. </p>
<p>&quot;In Russia, Jews had to work twice as hard as Russians; we had to be smarter and faster, otherwise the Soviet masters would not let us do anything. So, we arrived more educated, a head above native-born Israelis. Still, for some reason there was a stigma,&quot; he observed. &quot;When I first came to Israel, they asked me, 'Do you know what a refrigerator is?' They thought we all lived in Siberia with wild bears!&quot;</p>
<p>Peter's wife, Marina, a journalist with Channel 9, Israel's first 24-hour-Russian-language TV channel, shared his laughter. Marina and Peter wanted to vote for Lieberman, but instead they chose to cast their ballots for Benjamin Netanyahu of Likud because they worried that supporting Lieberman would harm Bibi's chance of becoming prime minister. </p>
<p>Lieberman's rise made international headlines because of his growing appeal among &quot;mainstream&quot;—that is, non-Russian—voters; however, his main support base has been overlooked. Mark Kotliarsky, the press secretary and spokesman for Lieberman's party, Israel Beitenu (Israel Is Our Home), attributes only four of the party's 15 Knesset seats to non-Russian voters. Still, Kotliarsky maintains that Israel Beitenu is not a Russian party but &quot;an Israeli party with Russian-repatriate-interest priorities.&quot; </p>
<p>When we met, the party office was buzzing with activity. Kotliarsky's data suggest that Lieberman received more than 50 percent of the Russian-speaking vote; most of the rest voted for Netanyahu because he had a better chance of becoming prime minister. What would happen if those Russians voted for Lieberman? I wonder. Kotliarsky answered my question in a flash. In the previous election, each mandate was worth about 28,000 votes. If all eligible Russian-speaking voters cast a ballot for Lieberman, their support alone would give him about 20 Knesset seats. If his popularity in the mainstream continues at the expense of other parties, it is possible Lieberman could gain enough mandates to become prime minister. (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_legislative_election,_2009#Results">This chart</a> shows how relatively small shifts in support can affect party standings.)</p>
<p>Lieberman appeals to Russians because he is perceived as an anti-democrat, someone who stands apart from other Israeli politicians who engage in endless, inconclusive dialogue. They see him as a decisive man of action. &quot;Lieberman is the first person to raise his voice against the sacred cow of democracy,&quot; Genadiy Nizhnik explains. Nizhnik moved to Israel at 18 and immediately joined the army; he is now in his late 30s. Wrapped in a woolen scarf to keep out the Jerusalem chill, Nizhnik is a giant of a man who looks more like a lumberjack than the tour guide of Jerusalem's holy sites that he is. </p>
<p>During our 30-minute conversation, Nizhnik knocked back four shots of Jameson whiskey without batting an eye, as if to flaunt the stereotype of the hard-drinking Russian. &quot;[Repatriates] have been immunized against liberal democracy. … We heard all the leftist fairy tales and lullabies, and we can't be bought with them. Maybe the locals can, but not us. Don't get me wrong,&quot; he adds, &quot;I'm not against democracy, just the kind of democracy we have in Israel. Life is too hard here. Life, God, death, and war are always right beside us.&quot; </p>
<p>Nizhnik also takes pride in Israel Beitenu's success with mainstream voters. He tells me times are changing for Russians—their culture and their political opinions are becoming more accepted by the mainstream. &quot;Russians have stopped being on the periphery here. Our violin joined the symphony and began to play. Now we are part of the Israeli orchestra, because it wasn't just Russians who voted for Lieberman.&quot;</p>
<p>For all the Russian repatriates' attempts to convince me they are accepted here, behind closed doors, <u><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabra_(person)">sabras</a></u> tell another story. To them, Russians remain outsiders. Young and old alike turn sour when discussing Lieberman's rise. </p>
<p>I met Danny on a bus in Jerusalem. His views echoed what many other Israeli-born Jews told me. &quot;The Russians? Lieberman? This is an embarrassment. They come here, they eat pork, most of them are not even Jewish!&quot; he exclaimed. &quot;And now they've elected him, they will ruin our country.&quot; </p>
<p>It is not only older Russian immigrants who felt alienated upon arriving in Israel. Twenty-one-year-old Yana moved to Be'ersheva from Russia when she was 7. Four years ago, when she moved to Tel Aviv, she changed her name to Lee. &quot;I didn't want people to know I was Russian,&quot; she explained. &quot;I was tired of being mocked and called a prostitute. I thought life would be easier.&quot; Lee doesn't &quot;look&quot; Russian—she looks like all the other beautiful girls with hazel eyes and flowing brown hair who roam the city's streets. Dressed in the latest fashions, she attracted admiring glances from other tables in the coffee shop where we met. &quot;But I'm Russian, no matter how hard I try, I'm Russian here.&quot; She sighed. &quot;I guess things are changing.&quot; </p>
<p>Two years ago, I met Sveta in Nicaragua. She was backpacking after her army service, an Israeli rite of passage. Sveta <em>looks </em>Russian, with long blond hair and bright blue eyes. She moved from Odessa at 13 and considers herself Israeli.</p>
<p>As we chattered away in Russian at a bar in Jerusalem, I glanced around to see if people were looking at us. I detected a faint air of distaste from the next table. Was I just being paranoid? After serving in the army, speaking Hebrew fluently, living and working here, how would it feel still to be labeled <em>Russian</em>? &quot;Doesn't it bother you?&quot; I asked Sveta.</p>
<p>&quot;Of course,&quot; she replied, dragging heavily on her cigarette, &quot;But that's reality. The only thing I can do is prove them wrong. I just have to show them Russians aren't like all the stereotypes.&quot; But with her parents and her friends voting for Lieberman, empowering themselves at the expense of reviving old stereotypes, I wonder if she can.</p>Fri, 13 Mar 2009 10:53:00 GMThttp://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/dispatches/2009/03/backlash_to_the_kingmaker.htmlSarah A. Topol2009-03-13T10:53:00ZWhat the rise of Avigdor Lieberman means for Russians in Israel.News and PoliticsWhat the rise of Avigdor Lieberman means for Russians in Israel.2213500Sarah A. TopolDispatcheshttp://www.slate.com/id/2213500falsefalsefalseAvigdor Lieberman